TO GARBLE THE COINAGE, verb. phr. (old).—See quot. [GARBLE = to pick and choose.]
1875. W. S. JEVONS, Money and the Mechanism of Exchange, p. 81. Hence arises the practice [amongst money-lenders], extensively carried on in the present day in England, of picking and culling, or, as another technical expression is, GARBLING the coinage, devoting the good new coins to the melting-pot, and passing the old worn coins into circulation again on every suitable opportunity.
