I just got back from swapping a bunch of junk silver for a double eagle. My buddy emptied all my rolls of silver and immediately pulled this out. The features are soft, it is extremely thin, and it appears cast. It weighs 1.2 grams, almost exactly half what a dime should weigh. So cool, somehow in my junk silver I ended up with a counterfeit dime....... But here's the kicker. He put it on a machine that confirmed the dime was silver. He checked and rechecked and the machine still says that the dime is silver. Well, I wanted to keep it at that point...... Thought I might throw it out for you guys to rationalize. Would it make sense for a counterfeiter to cast silver dimes half the correct weight? That seems an awful lot of effort to earn a nickel.
a dog peed on it and the acid ate it down to half it's thickness .... well, the acid part at least ....
It certainly doesn't make any sense to me. Very interesting coin. Hope you can discover and post the reasons.
It's definitely silver.. Corroded or erroded.. Saltwater issue I have found a few just like your example whilst metal detecting. I even have silver mercury dimes that are almost black. No matter how much I try to bring them back to a nice silver luster it just doesn't happen.
If it were in saltwater would that explain why it is half the weight of a regular dime? Simple saltwater corrosion?
Coins that I found like yours have tumbled around for years.. They lived a harsh life in a harsh environment.
