I was messing around with my new pcoket coin scale, and broke out my wheat pennies, and decided out of randomness to weigh some. I found a 1942 D penny, and it weighed a "noteable" amount less then another 42' D I found. Here's a few pic's. This is most likely nothing, but I had to make sure from the pro's. Thanks! (By the way, my scale isn't calibrated yet, it's a little off,) the one weighing 3.13 is the "regular" 42' D, and the one weighing 2.85 is the other).
Here is a regular photo. I weighed a 1943 steel cent and it weighed about 0.10 less then this 1942. Tell me what you think. Thanks!
I don't believe there is enough wear to account for the low weight. My guess would be that the coin weight was a little lower than mint specs when it was new. Mint Spec would have allowed it to be as low as 3 grams when new. From the amount of wear I see I don't think it has lost as much as even .1 grams in weight so I would guess it was underweight at around 2.95 grams when new. Slightly underspec but not seriously so.
I am not a expert. In the front page Coin Error for Dummies they write that the mint weight spec is + or - .10% *I have never seen it in any other book but that one so I am not 100% sure that is true.
