Hello, I just dug out some of my coins tonight because today in at work we were discussing coins a bit. I have always wondered about this coin. It is a 1945 wheat penny stamped on copper. The thing that is unusal about this penny is that it is smaller then a normal penny. If you hold a dime on top of it, it is the exact same size. I do not know if the coin was tampered with in any way. I found it when looking through a bunch of wheat pennies about 15 years ago, when I collected coins. Any ideas? Normal size penny and dime included in photo to see size.
Based on the pics I'd have to guess the coin has been altered. It appears as if the outer edges of the coin have been chipped or cut away.
Yep, the edges of the cent have been ground away, probably in an attempt to get it to pass for a dime in a machine.
I agree. It looks altered. Too bad. There are some genuine dime-sized cents from this year struck on Netherlands Antilles 1/2 centstukken planchets.
Hello All, I am new to this forum, I have stumbled upon it In search of information about These 1945 Altared or dime sized penny's. I have found one today while metal detecting. It is dime sized and has some wear on it. Ill upload a photo tomarrow when I have time to take the pictures. Im curious, If it is a altared penny, then surely 1945 wasn't the only one to get altared, there would be many from many different years. Does anybody else have pennys like this from different years? Ive found about 250 wheat pennys so far and this is the first one I have ever seen. Its pretty cool. Any more usefull info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Hi Larry! I would have to say that every single day there is someone somewhere altering a coin in one way or another. So, yes there are other dates altered like this. It it is indeed a dime-sized 1945, in my opinion there is a much better chance that it is a Wheat cent struck on Dutch Antilles 1/2 cent planchet as it is a known error. Welcome again and good luck on getting good advice! One thing I would advise is, when you get photos, start a new thread of your own with pics and you'll get a much better response than not. (There's alot of MD'ing folks here and we'd love to see anyother good coin finds you've got!) Good luck!
I also Have one of those pennies, I had posted about it a little while ago (my 1st post to the forum actually) heres my pick. Mine is a 1944
Hate to say this but we did this to pennies back when I was a kid. Take a penny and grind off the edge on the sidewalk and get a coke!
Ahhhhh! The good old days! If the store had the old style coke chest you could sometimes get two cokes by jamming open the mechanism. A coke, a bag of chips and some candy.... all for a quarter and then you take the bottle back, get 2 cents and buy more candy.
Yep, I have a few altered cents that I have found roll searching. It seems that during the 50s there were a lot of vending machines and parking meters that took dimes. I guess it was cost effective to grind down or acid dip a cent. And during those years into the early 70s nedarly every high school in the country had metal or auto shops. Shop experiments not only went from reducing the size of cents to that of dimes, but chrome plating them as well. It was a common thing happening and the altered cents aren't rare. gary
Hi hopefully u can help me I came across a 1949-D wheaty- IT IS NOT tampered with, it's actually in vf shape, it's 2.25mm too small( about size of dime). It weighs 3.31g?? Worth getting graded or average?
