I decided to look at the laws about our coins. Besides lots of cool facts about other of our coins, I learned that: The "one-cent" coin should weigh 3.11 grams and it should be 3/4 of an inch in diameter. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/5112#a The US one-cent coin may not vary more than .13 gram https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/5113 Happy New Year!
The .13g variance is on coins directly from the mint I think,that doesnt account for general ware or circulation
Yes @FoundinTN - That is an important thing to keep in mind and makes for a more complete answer to the question posed. Thanks!
Originally the zinc cents had the same tolerance and it was changed to .10 +/- Copper 2.98-3.24 Zinc 2.40-2.60
Not light enough. Plus without a photo, there's no way to determine if it is damaged, corroded, eaten away by acid, thinner planchet, etc. Also, scales are not always exact and some round off. So that's a factor. Even if your measurement was exactly correct, it's only off by 8 hundredths of a gram from tolerance.
