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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;-jeffB, post: 2648998, member: 27832&quot;]Hi -- welcome to CoinTalk!</p><p><br /></p><p>That&#039;s one of the colors that copper can turn when it&#039;s exposed to the elements. It&#039;s just surface corrosion. There isn&#039;t any &quot;copper layer&quot; to wear off on pre-1982 cents; they&#039;re the same metal all the way through. You could plate other stuff on <i>top</i> of the copper alloy (after the coin leaves the Mint), but again, the cent you have there just looks like it&#039;s corroded.</p><p><br /></p><p>You mention &quot;transition error&quot; in your title, referring to coins struck in the wrong metal right after a change in composition. The most famous example is the 1943 copper cent. But those errors happen because one of the old planchets doesn&#039;t get struck or thrown away, and finds its way into a batch of the new planchets.</p><p><br /></p><p>1981 cents were only struck in 1981. Without time travel, there&#039;s no way that one could be struck on a late-1982 copper-plated-zinc planchet. That&#039;s why I&#039;m pretty sure that you just have a corroded 1981 cent in the pictures.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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