Hi all, I found this cent during roll searching. It was obvious and popped out i thought and hoped (for some reason) it was a steal 1943 but was shocked to see it was 1989 zinc without copper cladding. Whats the deal with these coins with no clad? Do people remove the cladding? does it ware away? is it tampered with in some way by someone? Thanks in advance for the reply, i much appreciate any comments.
thanks for the reply! I hope someone knows something about it since i can't find much information online. It could be a nice error, it could be tampered with... I'm new to coin collecting so i need as much help as i can get, but either way its a very nice coin... Most clad errors I've seen are on copper coins not zinc so it seems rare enough. Any thoughts? also i found a link to a similar coin http://www.cointalk.com/t172839/ chemistry project? sand blasted? how do they do it?
Im no expert but you need to weight the coin. It might just be a discolored cent. The weight will tell the tell.
The pitted rough surfaces are usually an indicator that the copper plating has been removed with acid.
I was into electronics for awhile and learning how to etch a circuit board. There is a copper etching solution you can buy online or at radio shack that will eat away the unprotected copper so that you are left with a circuit. One of the guys who posted on that board said he likes to dip pennies into it, so this is probably what happened to this penny.
based on the surfaces and the way the edge looks around the 9 oclock area I would say this is PMD, somebody has stripped the coin.. Please do get a good weight on it to confirm, but thats my guess based on what we can see here.
Pmd? whats PMD? i will get the weight and put it up, i did check the weight a when i found it and wasnt too underweight, it was within range of the regular 2.6 gram stinki'n lincolns....
Cents are not clad, they're plated. And it's for sure PMD, chemically done. In chemistry class in high school we did that to some zinc cents. We also cut a slice out of them, then put them in a solution to eat away the zinc, which left a very thin, empty copper 'shell'. That was 10 years ago or so, but I imagine it's still done.
