i have never seen one in circulation, so i dont know. i know the one on the right looks like every other one i have seen, but the left almost looks like its missing a plating or something. do they fade like this when circulated?
Put the one on the right in your pocket for a few weeks and it will looks like the one on the left. They dont hold luster very well and wear down rather fast.
Well it's bit more than plating as most folks think of plating (regarding thickness), but yes, they are plated. The coins have a pure copper core plated with a manganese brass alloy.
I KNOW. THATS WHY I SAID IT ALMOST LOOKS LIKE THAT. sry. caps lock. i wasnt sure if it was normal wear, maybe an improper alloy mix(like a woody cent). i just dont come across them and i got it at a toll booth in fla, so it had been bugging me.
Gotcha, thanks for the info. I probably could have looked that up, but I don't have my redbook handy here at work.
The Mint had problems with the first year of issue (2000) because they were turning a nasty, ugly, puke-greenish-brown. Chris
They are "clad" and not "plated". The center 50% of the thickness is pure copper and the outer layers, which are each 25% of the thickness, are a Manganese Brass alloy. Nothing has been plated onto anything. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plating
In my experience, most of all the "golden dollars" (presidential & Sac's) look HORRIBLE after exposure to even minor circulation... I can't imagine how bad they'd look if they got the amount of circulation that other denominations get....
They look horrible if handled (exposed to oils and acid from fingers) and then allowed to sit and *not* circulate. If they do circulate, the surfaces are buffed up by the coins scraping against each other and they then have a nicer golden patina. Yes, it is darker than a shiny uncirculated coin, but it is not as icky as a handled coin that has sat around to 'rot'. Silver coins could turn black when they sat around, but when circulated they scraped themselves clean. The coke machine does not care how shiny my coins are, nor do the parking meters, candy machine, self check stand, etc.
Well I would think the first part of the statement would mean ( or seems to say) that it has an unusually heavy plating.
The guy I was responding to seemed to think the coins were made out of a solid alloy. The first part of my comment plainly says that most people would not consider it plating because of thickness. I was telling him the coins are not a solid alloy, but rather made in layers - which it is. No I did not use the correct terminology, that being clad, but I answered his question. And yes, clad is nothing more than heavy plating.
Sacagawea dollar counterfeits I found many in Ecuador that look like the one posted. There were mass counterfeited in Colombia. See link, http://www.smalldollars.com/dollar/add014.html
