Yeah okay plated or unplated. Why does the coin weigh under a gram. I mean 2.3 would be a dime 2.5 would zinc but its a 73. Zinc didnt start until 82 right 2.7 would be silver and if it was a quarter or nickel it'll still be more now they did start in 73 but only a 74 is known even though it was only for a test run and congress only got the pennys never sent to into circulation. Is it possible this was the first test run
I will post more photos on both sides and weigh it with a pic showing to. Ive seriously cannot find any info on it except that short paragraph when they did a test run on the aluminum penny thats it though
The Story of the 1973/74 Aluminum Lincoln Penny By Blanchard and Company - December 27, 2018 29473 8 By Blanchard & Company …… How do you run a successful business? You make sure that costs don’t exceed revenues. However, in a 2014 biennial report to Congress, the United States Mint explained that it takes 8.04 cents to make a nickel and 1.66 cents to make a penny. This imbalance between manufacturing costs and face value is a problem. This challenge is not new. In 1973 the Mint had the same problem. They decided to explore solutions. The prevailing idea was to make pennies from aluminum. Specifically, they intended to make them from an alloy of aluminum and trace metals. This approach would replace the copper-zinc composition in the traditional one-cent coin. Rising copper costs made the traditional 1973 penny nearly equal in cost to its face value. This brought the topic of seigniorage into the fold. Seigniorage is a word used to describe the difference between the face value of a piece of currency and the cost to manufacture and distribute the money. To avoid a model in which costs exceed face value, the U.S. Mint decided on an alloy consisting of 96% aluminum. Aluminum was less expensive, more durable, and resistant to tarnishing. Additionally, aluminum takes less of a toll on the die used to mint coins, which also brought manufacturing costs down. The Mint went forward with their plan. They struck more than 1.5 million new aluminum pennies in 1973 for intended release in 1974. Opposition to the plan, however, was immediate. Leadership in the copper industry rebuked efforts to abandoned the metal. Moreover, those in the vending machine industry became vocal about their concerns over the ability of machines to function with aluminum coins. There was an additional problem to all of this that no one foresaw: radiodensity. Radiodensity is the inability of kinds of electromagnetic radiation to pass through a material. That is, pediatric radiologists cited the aluminum coins as a risk because they would be difficult to locate in an X-ray scan. An aluminum coin might be undetectable if a child ingested one. The coin might appear indistinguishable from human tissue on the images. In time, the cost of copper declined. This, coupled with the growing voice of aluminum detractors left the initiative dead. The Mint recalled the aluminum coins. However, a small portioned were never returned, probably totalling 12 to 14 coins. These few pieces have remained hidden and unsold, therefore their value remains obscure. However, in early 2014 a San Diego resident claimed to own a 1974-D aluminum coin. The “D” signifies that it was minted in Denver. The owner’s father was once a deputy superintendent of the Denver Mint. Some initial estimates put the value of the piece at $250,000 USD, with some suggesting that the value could reach as high as $2 million.
Counterfeiters know about that "1974-D" story too. That's why there are so many fake double 1955 pennies out there. Because the counterfeiters know about that "Double 1955" story too. If they're going to go through all the time and effort to counterfeit something, they may as well do it with one that can get the most money in return.
Plating it ruins it. Do you mean you think it’s the rare aluminum one and someone plated it to ruin it? Just put down your scale and think that out for a moment. If you had the rare aluminum cent, would you ruin it? But if you didn’t have it and wanted to trick someone you would. And that’s what happened, here.
Acid removes the copper alloy at same rate in all directions, so the coin is less size in height and obverse and reverse. If same size physically, check for a very small cut around the inside surface of the rim where someone used a lathe to remove the internal mass. Often called a magician coin if one side is correct and the other is a different value coin. Jim
check yer scale. all I can really say about that part. your pictures are of poor quality, your thumb is covering where the VDB should be, everything si washed out and detail-less, good enough for an Etsy listing or an Ebay auction I suppose, but for identifying real from fake, nahhh you gonna have to do better than that! plenty of spark erosion fakes out there that pop up on ebay from time to time made out of aluminum weighing in at around 1 gram. https://www.ngccoin.com/news/article/842/ and from PCGS "Spark-Erosion Counterfeits Spark-erosion counterfeits are quite easy to detect because of the way in which they are manufactured. In the spark-erosion process, a model coin (usually genuine) is submersed in an electrolytic bath where the coin faces the counterfeiter's die steel. An electrical current is charged through the coin so that a spark jumps across the shortest gap between the coin and the die, thus etching the coin's design onto the steel die. After both the obverse and reverse have undergone the electrical current process, the dies are highly polished. This is necessary because once the dies have been etched, they remain somewhat pitted. The polishing generally will clean up the fields, but often the design will retain the pitting, since counterfeiters tend not to polish the main devices. Either they are unable to get down into the design, or for time's sake they choose to leave the design elements alone. In either case, these counterfeits are easy to detect, since their surfaces are glassy smooth-resembling a Proof finish-yet their devices are lumpy (remember, the pitting on the dies becomes raised lumps on the finished product). Because the excessive polishing makes the dies sharp, these counterfeits appear to be extremely well-struck, with knifelike edges and rims. These counterfeits usually are found on small-type coins such as cents and dimes, and on small-sized patterns such as those for Flying Eagle cents and dimes. PCGS has not encountered them on gold coins." Not saying it can't be a cent struck on aluminum, I dunno, struck on a Phillipines planchet or something like that POSSIBLY, Just saying, your scale should be double and triple checked for accuracy as a first step, then clean up these pictures so we can see what's actually going on. At face value, I'm going to say its a spark erosion counterfeit. And I'd add, the technology for prototyping copies of things has become way more advanced in the last decade, and cleaner then earlier methods.
Post pictures that aren't blurry or grainy and we can probably spot all the problems on the coin that prove its a fake. Also, why are you even touching it? If you have a belief that it's an authentic aluminum cent, it shouldn't even be touched on the edge.
I may have missed it, but did you do the magnetic test? I have a hollow cent that was used in a magic trick. It is just the steel shell of a cent, so super light.
I also have a magician's coin. Extremely light and custom made. In hand it is easy to see it is fake. Good for show-n-tell. Enjoyed you're post.
I'll never know cause I dont have the coin. But when its back in my hands again I'm posting a video of it. That's all the pics I had when I took it years back
