3 questionable Lincoln cents

Can anyone help me determine if these are PMD or if there’s some sort of issue with the copper plating? Even better, does someone have a link or solid explanation on how to best differentiate? I’d like to learn. Point of note: I’ve been holding onto these from my cent searching and do not believe they were together, but I can’t rule that out either. It’s been a while. I can get weights for these, but figured the plating vs non plating weights would be negligible. I’m under the assumption that they’re just PMD toning, but would like to learn more about the various plating issues.

Thanks!

 

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The last Cent could be Brass Plating.. Or maybe just cleaned with a color altering chemical.

 

I was thinking brass. I have another that I think might also be brass plated. Problem is, I don’t know how to definitively identify it.

 

just toned, as for brass, theres no way i know of to identify it, all i can do is guess, if u or someone u know works in a lab where u can analyze the composition of the coin then maybe u can identify it...heres a sampling of toned cents i've found CRH..

 

Cool color set!

 

Could also be zinc poisoning in the plating bath... causes a yellowish color

 

That's what cents look like after 20-35 years in circulation,
and where they might have been stored or where they've been.

 

Laundry money...cool!

 

Love your toners! I'm putting together a US Toned Coin album of all modern denominations. My cent group has a ways to go.....

 

Fred, I don't mean to demean your vast experience and knowledge, but I would appreciate if you gave me a little more thought and something other than the standard response to the run of the mill newbie who comes in with a coin they don't know much about. I've literally gone through hundreds of thousands of Lincoln cents in the last two years. Of all those coins, these few stood out because their color and (lack of) wear. I'll accept acid soaked, I'll accept some specific damage, but telling me it's "standard" isn't going to cut it, since this is not the only pile I've gone through in the last two years; each bag contains around 3,000 cents and I have only a handful of these I've seen and pulled.

 

No offense taken -

However, there isn't much to add.

Copper plating surfaces change 'color'
due to circulation, just like pre-83 copper cents do.

They're 'standard' color coins to me;
I fully understand if you think they
are something else - that's what collecting
is about - but I feel that if you show the
coins in person, or the photos you've posted,
to any number of other error collectors and/or
dealers, they probably wouldn't think they are
something special or different about them.

I encourage and await your further research on them.

 

No offense intended, but do you really think that Fred, or anyone else for that matter, can give you a definitive answer to your question? That would be like picking out a grain of sand from the beach and determining where it has been the last couple of decades. Worse yet, if you believed that person, I have a bridge I want to sell you.

Chris

 

That's the problem, there really isn't a good, cost effective way to do a non-destructive test to show it's brass. XRD and SEM/EDS penetrate slightly below the surface, and since the copper plate is so thin, the analysis can pick up some of the Zinc in the core, resulting in erroneous results.

 

Here are my toned cents. Tough to get a good picture in the album but too lazy to pull them out for a group picture.

 

according to past US MINT documents the copper plating is 8 microns thin.
Copper changes toning/corrosion very easily. Have you ever seen houses with copper sheets on them (this roofing article even correlates it to pennies) ? https://www.huberroofing.com/blog/2017/11/16/everything-you-need-to-know-about-copper-roofing

Luckily roofs sit in one place and not much happens to it.
On the other hand, coins end up in about anything and everything that you can't think of thus affecting their color, and physical damage. How many times have you seen ppl put coins in their cupholders underneath their soda pops .. and what's in soda?

 

Well, that ended up a big fail. Maybe I'll pull them for a photo later, lol.

 

Look man, I started out by asking for info/literature on the subject, because I don’t know enough on the matter, and whether it can even be answered. There could be tells like the lines shown from chemically removing the copper on the error-ref site, or a weight issue, or something. I don’t know, and couldn’t find it online, so I asked. If you’re going to try and insult me for hoping that one of the foremost experts on errors might be able to clarify how to determine whether something is improperly plated, then I think we both have better things to do with our time.

 

I think Fred was just being polite.

Chris

 

He certainly was. We could both learn something from that. Have a great day.

 

I just posted some plating info in another thread.
But with plating 3 things can cause problems
1 - contamination / preparation
2 - oxidation
3 - plating rate

the us mint's supplier pushes #3 so there's uneven and incomplete bonding / plating blisters, etc as circulated coins are used for the money supply, with no concern over people collecting circulated coins.

but a quick general search of the subject
https://www.sharrettsplating.com/blog/electroplating-defects-issues/

in the thread about us mint's materials there much more info
go to this thread for the documents with a wealth of stuff about the copper plating, testing, problems, etc
https://www.cointalk.com/threads/alternative-metals-testing-for-us-coinage.333055/