ok, back in the 80's i was dating a bank teller, and she saved me all kinds of goodies, old coins, silver, blue and red seal currency, oddities, i sorta schooled her on things to watch for, one day she had this for me,she said it came out of a roll of quarters, so at the time i just marked it as an unfinished quarter as it is copper colored and has a reeded edge, but recently dug it out, took pics, measured and weighed it, well the weight has me stumped, the 1980 quarter in pic is 24.13 mm, the "slug" is 24.16 mm, so same size as quarter but weight is way off as shown in pics, a normal clad quarter is 5.67 grams, which the 1980 quarter comes in at, but this "slug" weighed in at 6.5 g, oh, and its non magnetic, so what is it? is it a washington unclad copper planchet? or could it be from a foreign coin? what do you all think??
It's a slug. There are a lot of these around. They were made to fool either vending machines or to "short" quarter rolls. It was punched from copper strip using and punch and plate that created the reeded edge on the slug. The reeded edge on a coin is formed when it is struck, and clearly this hasn't been struck. You don't seed reeded edges on foreign coin banks either. If you coin is going to have a reeded edge why reed the blank when you can create the reeds during the strike, and if you strike it in a plain collar you'll just crush the reeding on the blank. You will notice it doesn't have the raised rim of an upset planchet, so the reeding wasn't added as a separate step by an upsetting mill.
