yep, it plated with something. it still is a cool looking coin!:thumb: its not worth anything over a cent, but if it were a cent on a dime plachet it would have been worth around $250. if it were a dime plachet a vending machine should have accepted it for a dime.
The USPS is discontinuing vending machines in post offices. The one at my post office has already been removed. Are there other vending machines that still accept cents? I remember a gum machine in my grandfather's barber shop that accepted cents in the '60s and well into the '70s. But I doubt you can by a gum ball for a cent anymore.
I think that I have the same exact penny as you. I found it a few years ago and just today decided to try and look it up. This is really the only thing that popped up. But yeah mine is really shiny too. Can someone help me out?
Don't panic. If this is what it is, the mercury is bound -- "amalgamated", or alloyed -- into the surface. The only way to get a toxic amount out of it would be to dissolve it chemically (using strong acids), or to head it enough to drive the mercury off ("heat with a torch", not "warm in your hand").
Old thread but clearly some people never zinc coated cents in chemistry (turn them silver, then heated to turn them gold). This one looks like it only got the zinc coating and was never heated. Same thing that was done to this copper round below zinc coating it.
I also have a 1975 Silver penny exactly like the one Pride Hunter is describing in my small coin collection,I also no nothing about it.
I have one of these I have just found in my Grandfathers coin collection, it has no mint mark. What does that mean?
Here is a selection of "gold" pennies my high school students made. If they stopped at the zinc plating stage, they would have had "silver" pennies.