I'm guessing it got dipped in something acidic. More of a general question- why do people drill holes, mash with an axe, shoot them, etc. Boredom?
A CENT is worth ... nothing. There is nothing legitimately worth one cent anymore. Hence the coin is a toy that is only worth "messing" with. Coin!? That may be an overstatement. A piece of metal is much closer to the truth.
You are correct --one cent by itself is rather helpless, but a coffee can full of cents usually returns $25.
That and most of the rest of the answers are just the modern interpretations of what has been going on for as long as there have been coins. People drilled holes in them a long, long time ago. In the so called old wild West it was always part of those shows to shoot a coin. Even on a TV show not long ago someone had a coin that was supposed to have been shot by Annie Oakly. Remember that guy named George Washington? He too tried to throw a coin accross a river. Jewlers have been melting them down for as long as people wanted jewlery. And as long as there are RR tracks, kids just have to see what a train will do to a coin. People flip them to see who pays for coffee. At football games they flip them to see who goes first. They are placed under a new mat of concrete for good luck. There are probably as many reasons to destroy a coin as there are coins. And very, very, very few have to do with the value. And it's not just pennies. People do things to every denomination.
And to answer the question "what happened to this penny?" The coin in question, if the date is post 1982 is a zincoln and is a zinc coin plated with copper. often the zinc starts to oxidize beneath the copper plating giving the coin the appearance of having pimples or bubbles. Richard
alicechaos, What year is the coin? I can see 198 If it 1982 or later it could be the copper top layer separating from the zinc underneath. Yours is a little more extreme than most. usually it is just one or two small bubbles. In the earlier years when the mint first started the Zinc with copper coating Cent I see more like yours. U.S. Mint did not have the process down yet I think. I like the chicken pox thing that is what I think of when I see those type of Zincoln (Zinc Lincoln)Cents Stewart
Ziggy9, Looks like we were typing the same thing at the same time But the posting says yours posted at 3:51 P.M. and mine posted at 3:52 P.M. Where I am at it was about 6:30 A.M. Think the internal clock on the web site server may be off by a little bit Blasted Computers :computer: LOL Stewart
Not just kids, someone I "know" would do that in college as well, you could normally still see the coin design. If I remember right nickels were the best. Hard to find the coin after the train got it though.
Ziggy and Stewart, Thanks! It is 1987 D, so it might be the zinc oxidizing. Anyone selling these on Ebay yet???
I'll explain the process as the planchets tumbled in vat, one fell out, the janitor found in dust pan of trash, he blew the dirt of , threw planchet back in vat. planchet then copper plated and struck. :bigeyes:
