Here,s a pic of a real one, compare to yours. http://www.coinfacts.com/small_cents/lincoln_cents/wheat_ear_cents/1943_copper_cent.htm the diognostics I checked don't match. different die at least
No reason to be paranoid at all. If it passes all the tests, then take it to a major show that PCGS or NGC is attending and present it in person. Or otherwise, registered mail, insured and with a return signed receipt request.
The top TPG's do hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business each year. They wouldn't risk that income flow to steal a coin most likely worth less than 100K. Made at Philadelphia and the mintmarks were punched in there not at the branch mints. Since 1997 Denver makes it's own dies from Master hubs provided by Philadelphia.
It won't matter; we'd still be comparing to a poor image which has distortions we don't know about. And those distortions are affected by focal length, magnification, sensor size and distance from the subject, all of which would have to be duplicated to get the same distortion as the OP coin. And then you'd have an identical shot.
You do not need identical images so long as you have decent camera and a photoshopping program. You can adjust for angle, size, and rotation. Sensor size and distance are totally immaterial. However, out of focus cannot be compensated for. They look as identical as can be expected considering the quality of the op picture. Here is my overlay and I am far from an expert. The white line you can occasionally see is my 1943 steel. Here is my coin;
The Chinese overlays well also. So not until I see the reverse. Even then, I would see a respected dealer and probably go with his opinion.
You can't adjust for the perspective distortion inherent in macro photography, marked and all out of proportion to the angle of view. And really deceptive, capable of affecting only a small percentage of the surface of the pictured coin depending on magnification, angle, focal length and distance from the subject. Admittedly, we seem to have very little of that to worry about here; the OP image looks to be pretty square. How do you test for that when your eyes might be deceiving you? Capture it into an editing program, and attempt to crop it with the cropping tool forced to "square." In this case, the OP image is off. Only a few pixels, but it's off. Does that introduce enough distortion to make the difference? I don't know; the image isn't good enough. Which is my point. And even if the coin's details are adjudicated "perfectly" accurate, all that eliminates is the wrong coin being altered to the right look. It doesn't eliminate copper-plated or -washed Steelies, which we've all seen dozens of. Exactly.
Perspective, you absolutely can. If you are saying barrel distortion, that is why I stated "decent camera". I think you would be very surprised at how good today's camera really are.
No, I'm referring to extension perspective distortion, and if I'm that surprised at the capabilities of modern cameras I should probably quit using them and teaching people how to use them to photograph coins like I've been doing for the last ten years.
I copied the OP's photo so I could enlarge it and look at it. Compared to a real 1943 copper, a steel 1943 and a 1948. The 3 looks good. What are the possibilities? 1. The coin is real. 2. The coin is a steel cent that has been bronzed. 3. The coin is a counterfeit. 4. The coin is an altered 1948. It doesn't look like #4 to me, as I have seen those before. The OP says it doesn't stick to a magnet, so that rules out #2. If it is really from 1950, is it a counterfeit? Prob not. What interests me, is that while 40 or so are said to have been produced, with a survival rate of 20+, 12 have been identified. (Please update/ correct any of those numbers.) Is the fact that these coins were produced at all 3 mints. Generally, I would think something like this would only happen at 1 mint and not all 3. So, there are examples that are still "in circulation". And a new one does pop up once in a while. I think the last one was an "S" that wasn't previous known.
