Here's the deal. I get rolls of pennies and make 3 piles. The first is 1981 and earlier (for the copper). The second is after 1984 (which get re-rolled and sent back). The third pile is 1982 and 83's. I weigh the 82's and keep the coppers and weight the 93's on a lark thinking I may someday find a copper 1983. Well I found one today. It weighs in at a robust 3.11 grams. Anyone seen or heard of this? My guess is that a 82 copper planchett got into the hopper some way.
Can't say that I have heard of it. But if it weighs the 3.11 gm - I'd probably be sending it in to have it authenticated.
yea, i've heard of that. supposably the mint found some leftover copper, and made some of the 1983 cents out of copper. great find! first time i read about a 1983 copper cent, i thought it was just a joke. i will be looking for them from now on since someone found one.:thumb:
Great find. This is probably a legit and rare coin. The mint is a factory and planchets simply get lost in the machinery. There are some of these known from late in the 1980's.
Well, I'm not so sure about it being worth 15,000. I did read an article in Numismatic News within the last year about someone else finding one. That's when I started weighing mine. For those of you searching rolls, buy a cheap scale and weigh your 83s. It may be worth your time.
something eaiser than a scale is a metal detector. i can set my metal detector where it doesn't pick up zinc cents. also, it has a higher tone for copper and a medium tone for zinc. where can you get a cheap scale? walmart?
I bought my scale on Ebay. It's a model TP-100 and cost me less than 15 bucks. It's very accurate too, especially for such a cheap scale.
The book on the coin errors and varietites "Strike It Rick With POcket Change" cliams it to be worth $1500 and up.
Any major TPGs such as PCGS, NGC, ANACS and ICG will do a proper job. (You should be able to google them up) There is no reason why you shouldn't sent it for authentictation if you seriously think it's genuine especially if you are talking a solid 4 digit figures.
The first one was discovered sometime in the past six months. Yours is the second one that I have heard of. Surprisingly there has also been an 89 and I believe a 90 discovered as well. As far as I know none of them have ever sold on the open market so any prices are speculative.
And finally we have a real use for TPG encapsulation! If I were an error coin buyer, I doubt that I would go very high on an unverified wrong planchet coin that I couldn't closely examine first. (Of course, an SGS capsule wouldn''t give me any confidence either.)
Good idea. For the cost to have that done it may well be worth that. Try the PCGS or NGC web sites. They will instruct you on how to have the coin authenticated.
You know, I honestly don't think these things are EXTREMELY scarce. I just think that they're kinda hard to search for (because not every copper hoarder weighs their coins). I weight all 83's, but I've never weighed 89 or 90's, so I have no idea what made someone weigh those. Not sure what I'll do with it right now. I'm going overseas on business for 2 months, so it will have to wait until then. Until that time, I'll research it some more, and keep it in a safe deposit box.
holy googa mooga, I'd never even heard of this til just now, boy is my scale gonna get a work out!!!!!
