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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Bill in Burl, post: 1235980, member: 23692&quot;]Any coin with any wear is going to weigh less than 4.54g.&nbsp; There is no generic composition for brass.&nbsp; Some brasses weigh less than bronze and some are heavier.&nbsp; I have been an avid collector of Victoria large cents for 40 years and have more than 5000, over 600 of those 1859&#039;s.&nbsp; I have seen hundreds of coins that appear as does yours.&nbsp; It has been cleaned or exposed, either intentionally or unintentionally, to some type of oxidizing chemical agent.&nbsp; There are any number of different household agents that can do it ... so some time in the last 150 years, it was exposed to something.&nbsp; There is a relatively new electronic gizmo ($50,000 or more) that takes a shot and gives composition without actually taking a sample or sliver and 100% reliable.&nbsp; What has been done in the past is to take it outside in the sunlight and scratch the edge with a diamond preferably, but glass will work.&nbsp; Then look at the marks.&nbsp; If they are really yellowish (and not bronze that has been chemically exposed) then it COULD BE brass.&nbsp; Only a reputable TPG company that will certify it can call it &quot;genuine&quot;.&nbsp; It is the opinion of nearly every Canadian large cent expert (me included) that there was never such a thing as a true &quot;brass&quot; circulating coin, although a trial or test/speciman piece is possible.&nbsp; The ones that have been termed brass are due to mixing problems with the alloys and planchets and were accidental, not intentional.&nbsp; We recently &quot;shot&quot; nearly 50 of large cents with the aforementioned gizmo, about half that had a possibilty of being brass due to color, and found not a single brass one.&nbsp; We also found the actual alloys from the electronic &quot;reads&quot; to be all over the map and no two the same.&nbsp; What has been called &quot;brass&quot; isn&#039;t .. it just depended upon an incorrect mixture or where in the pour crucible those planchets actually came from or when, since lighter material stayed at the top and heavier sank.&nbsp; I know two people who have &quot;brass&quot; cents that are certified by ICCS, but they don&#039;t want the coins retested.&nbsp; They were cert&#039;d by Brian, using the diamond and sunlight test.&nbsp; Any incandescent or florescent light puts a tinge to the color of the scratches, and any metal that makes the scratches does the same.&nbsp; Anything retested and found not to be true brass has lost 99% of its value.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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