Just wondering if this was anything im new doing this but I got pretty cool finds but this in not sure help please thank you!
Hello and Welcome ! The Cent you have is made out of Zinc (97.5% ) , and Copper ( 2.5% ) . No Gold . Sorry
Just to clarify.. The core is Zinc and the plating is Copper. It could be golden in color if buffed, or cleaned. Definitely not made of gold if that's what you're thinking.
Wow that's pretty cool I didn't think it was Gold. I'm aware 1982 is trans year, from cooper to zinc. Thank you for all responsive answers this is very neat to say the least! I appreciate it all! I was hoping I had a special one lol
The Zinc core melts at 420C/787F, so it's unlikely that you could get it hot enough to significantly affect the color of the copper plating. BTW: this thread is almost a year old and the OP hasn't been around since then.
If you can control the temperature well enough right around the melting point the zinc can dissolve into the copper plating to create a brass alloy with a gold color. But if the temperature is too low the dissolving doesn't occur, and too high the copper plating simply dissolves completely into the coin.
Also there were a few cents with gold leaf treatment ( thickness of 4-5 millionths of an inch ) produced by several "mints". I have a small booklet of such sheets from an art project a decade ag0. Even with the increase in gold value it isn't worth even a dollar. Gold can be processed until it is so thin one can see through it. Google gold leaf for more fun facts. When I was in college and using an electron microscope, we would "stain" chromosomes of Drosophila with gold or osmium tetraoxide by electrically sputtering it in a vacuum chamber. Gold was cheap then, osmium was extremely expensive ( and dangerously unhealthy) which explains a lot about me I guess . Jim
Theoretically, I'm sure it's possible, but I'd suspect it would take a relatively long period of time for the solid zinc to diffuse into the copper lattice and form alpha brass. 420C isn't very hot. So I still think it's reasonable to say that you won't get a color change under real world conditions. Edit to add: copper cookware can exhibit heat tint and will lighten in reducing environments (poorly tuned combustion parameters from propane stoves seemed to be a culprit back in my days of working QA for a cookware company) However, the flame and/or electric burners are well above the melting point of zinc. I don't believe the low temps will induce heat tint, but I have no first hand knowledge and am open to be proven wrong.
We used to use Gold-Palladium sputtered coatings for ceramic SEM samples. I'm not certain, but I believe the thickness was a couple nanometers. I coated a couple of nickels years ago and put them in 2x2s. Now I'll have to find them
