I am new and trying to learn. What would this be called for this potential error? You can see it slightly on the D of the mint mark. It’s mainly on reverse side. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA you will see it on the outer edge of most of the letters.
Copper plated zinc Planchets have all sorts of issues due to die deterioration. Split plating. Deterioration Doubling aka worthless doubling. Nothing really major and can be found on thousands of 1982 and after Cents. Welcome to Cointalk
Welcome to CT. What you’re seeing is a copper plated zinc cent minted by a worn die. It’s very common.
I first started noticing these about 10 years ago. And that was before I was on this forum. I too thought it may be an error and with some value. What I've also noticed is from the start of zinc pennies in 1982 until the late 90's, I never seen a penny with this type of issue. They must have changed something with the materials and/or process that causes it to do this starting in the early 90's. I'm thinking that it has to do a lot with the thickness of the copper layer. The first maybe 10 years of making these coins I don't think this issue was all that common compared to like the last 15 years.
