I need some help in this. Not quite sure what I have here. The penny is dirty and I'm afraid to clean it. Any ideas on what this is?
It’s a 1943-D steel cent. PMD above the date and it looks like a rust spot below the date on the rim. Best not to clean it.
Hard to tell with those photos. It may have been an old re-platted cent and the bumps are due to that.
See if you can get a photo of the edge with a nice light. If it is rusty, it is not re-plated . If it is shiny, it has been, but the amount of corrosion may not really tell us anything. Jim
I want to try something new . I'm going to drink a whole bunch of beers, maybe then these blurry images everyone's is posting will look clear ..
Zinc is the answer you're looking for, and it's actually slowly coming off all on it's own, rotting and decaying itself away. That's why most of the numbers and lettering are nearly gone. I'm pretty sure it's just the material, has rotted away. I've got about two rolls of these steelies in the same condition, some even more rotted away than yours. The 1943 pennies are made from zinc coated steel. That right there explains why these pennies just decay and rot away, much like they do today, (starting in 1982).
