Freshly cut wood!

Consider yourself lucky. About 90% of them I find only have it on one side. In fact, I started tossing the one siders into the junk bin because I had so many. I only save the two siders anymore.

 

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I've never noticed these, but I really like the wood grain effect. I'm going to have to start checking for these now!

 

What would you like me to use on it? Name your poison(s) and I'll soak it.

I seriously doubt they were "made" because I've acquired so many of them over the years all from random Brinks boxes from circulation. I agree with you and Dick, I don't understand how it happens on just one side.....and far more frequently than on both sides.

 

Here's my possibly hair-brained theory. Is it possible that some kind of contaminate is being impregnated onto the surface of the copper when the sheets are being rolled to make the planchets? With it being only on the surface, when the coin is struck the areas where the metal gets stretched the most on the devices is where it seems to disappear. I agree with rlm that this isn't caused by an improper mix of alloy like the wheaties. On these you don't see any lighter tones,only darker ones.

 

On the nickel the streaks are opposite from obv. to rev., yet it does not look like a surface issue as some of those cents. This would support the mixing of alloy theory(no?).

 

I don't have or use any commercial products like those. Being a chemist, those are not even in my inventory. What I'll do is sonicate one of them in various strong solvents in the lab....when time permits.

 

Beautiful coin!

I know next to nothing about Buffalos, but that sure looks like toning that would result from an improperly mixed alloy. Notice the direction of the grain from obverse to reverse. Doug pointed this out in an earlier post here.

 

Indeed. Thanks for the guidance Doug!

 

If you have so many of them, try a mild vinegar solution. Just enough to give it a lighter tone - not back to yellow. See what they look like.

 

I want to see if it's an organic residue first. Acids will too harsh for this experiment to start.

 

Your coins. You set the rules. However, if you have enough in your trash bin, try them all at once.

 

That's what I was thinking... ...

 

Thad, is there any way you can run you x-Ray spectrophotometer on a small enough piece of these to tell us anything?

 

Given time. We have an SEM-EDXRF in my lab. However, we have a very busy lab, we process almost 1000 samples a week and we have about 10 metal samples for SEM analysis a week. A typical SEM analysis take about 20-30+ minutes to complete so the instrument is pretty back-logged.

 

If our plant were still up, ours ran faster than that and was a lot less used. I am not sure just what either of us had, but he used to run ~10 samples at a time and get the compositions back in an hour or two. However, the operative word in there is IF.

 

Here are a couple of MPL's that have some wood.

 

Very nice cents ! I only see the wood on the reverse of the 1913 though.