Found this in my wheaties by running a magnet over them to pick out the steel cents, but I've never seen one like this before and was wondering if anyone knew why someone would do this? It weighs 3.2 grams and you can see the copper.
Plating coins was a common high school experiment and many companies do it as novelties. Then they get spent.
Forgot another reason - scammers plating 1943 cents in copper, or 1944 cents in zinc/steel/nickel, to try to pass them off as rare wrong planchet errors. I wouldn't expect that for a 1953 though.
There’s also artistic reasons that have no malicious intent. Many coins, especially some Peace Dollars, were polished for jewelry, like a necklace or a belt buckle. The larger coins made more of an impact. But smaller coins, IHC, Barber nickels and mercury dimes were plated with a variety of metals: gold, silver, chrome, nickel…and then used to make rings.
