i have this 1913 large cent i picked up at a flea market a long time ago when i was a kid... it looks to be lightly silver plated... normally i dont clean my coins as it can damage them... however i cant remember what i used but i tried to see if the entire thing is silver and as you can see from the pictures it only seems to have a thin layer on top...... on the king it looks red from the copper.... thats where it got a bit scratched and the silver came off... i also used a bit of vim to see if it was painted or something (vim can take off all types of stains) and none of the silvery colour came off... so i figured this must be silver on top of copper... now im wondering if this is a unique coin plated at the mint or just someone fooling around trying to make a fake? some pics (I can take better ones if you guys need):
Definately anyone can fool around with some fake commerical silver plating. There is no reason why the Canadian mint would plate such coins, as well as, the plating is unusually thick and uneven by minting standards, and hence my conclusion: someone decided to test out how well the plating stuff works.
well the entire thing was silver covered until i scraped some of it away to see if it's copper underneath... but yes the plating is unusually thick... well i remember them telling me that when they plate coins that are going through minimal circulation it would be very thin (olympic gold medal for example)
Some silver colored copper coins may have been mercury dipped. If this is one of them it should not be handled without gloves as it is toxic and absorbed through the skin.
