At first I thought it was in a fire, but wouldn't the features on it have melted? The same with acid, wouldn't it also destroy the features? It weighs 3.0 grams. Also, what's with the black stuff?
I think you're right about a fire. My guess is that a molten material came in contact with the coin and reacted with the copper. On the right side above the date it looks like the material is slightly raised. If the melted area formed a slightly different composition, the crack could have occurred during cooling. The black residue is probably left over from the fire. Copper melts at around 2000F but other common metals like zinc and aluminum melt at lower temps, so fire may not have been hot enough to melt the copper, but still melt other stuff There are as many ways for a coin to get damaged as there are coins. I don't think anyone can say for certain but that's my guess
That is from asphalt. It would have been there long enough to be ran over by a vehicle, then the sun shining on it to melt the asphalt, and that is the result. I find them all the time like that down here in the south.
Alloys melt at a given temperature, otherwise you could heat 40% silver halves and just drip out all of the pure silver. Generally alloys have higher temperatures than the individual metals in the alloy.
@TheFinn Look at some of these phase diagrams. http://copperalliance.org.uk/docs/librariesprovider5/resources/pub-94-equilibrium-diagrams-pdf.pdf There are lots things that can that can occur at temps below the M.P. of Copper, especially with zinc. I was suggesting that the interface between a molten metal and the contact surface could form a different localized phase (alloy). I'm stretching an analogy a little, but it would be something like putting salt on ice. and during cooling, that secondary phase could have caused the cracks I was also interpreting that the crack on the coin was running into copper and not just something pulling off the surface. If the crack is just caused by something peeling away from the original surface (which it may very well be), then there are many more potential causes. Hope this helps. I saw a crack that appeared to be extending into the body of the coin and this seemed like a plausible explanation.
You are correct. I forget we're on the Zinc standard now. The new cents are like M&Ms, with a hard outer shell and soft center that can melt at a lower temp, which could cause lots of odd things to occur.
