42 experimental coin 0

[Laylow55]

I have a 1942 wheat penny that weighs 2.7 grams is magnetic has a silver coating I've seen one other just like it but can't find it anywhere now any help would be appreciated 

[Oldhoopster]

Sorry, but your coin was plated after it left the mint.  You can see it starting to peel away at the rim. The silver plating is either nickel, or it has a nickel strike coating under the final plate.  Nickel is ferromagnetic so this type of plating will stick to a magnet. The low end weight tolerance of a cent is 2.98 grams. Your weight of 2.7 (1 digit resolution isn't very good) could be scale set up/calibration or a minor rolled thin planchet.  Since the coin is plated, its considered damaged and the error wouldn't add any value.

[Laylow55]

Thanks 

[Laylow55]

I just don't understand why someone would have went to great lengths to preserve a silver plated coin but who knows what people are thinking nowadays

[Hoghead515]

On 11/2/2022 at 3:15 PM, Laylow55 said:

I just don't understand why someone would have went to great lengths to preserve a silver plated coin but who knows what people are thinking nowadays

Alot of them are school expermints and things like that. 

[RWB]

Plated and polished one-cent coins were and remain popular for very cheap, shiny jewelry and tourist junk.

[JKK]

On 11/2/2022 at 12:15 PM, Laylow55 said:

I just don't understand why someone would have went to great lengths to preserve a silver plated coin but who knows what people are thinking nowadays

A few misunderstandings there, and we can help you with them. It is highly unlikely that the plating is silver; to us in the coin world, silver is a metal rather than a color, and we don't say silver unless we mean the metal. It is highly unlikely that preservation was the motive; more likely ones are "kids just goofing" and "making pretty shiny to sell as a pendant in a bail." It surely did not involve going to great lengths; you can buy the stuff over the counter and try it on your own with ease. Again, not to nitpick; just to help you gain the most understanding from this.

[VKurtB]

On 11/2/2022 at 3:52 PM, RWB said:

Plated and polished one-cent coins were and remain popular for very cheap, shiny jewelry and tourist junk.

When I was a tiny whipper snapper, I had a belt with polished cents on it. 

[VKurtB]

On 11/3/2022 at 11:30 AM, JKK said:

A few misunderstandings there, and we can help you with them. It is highly unlikely that the plating is silver; to us in the coin world, silver is a metal rather than a color, and we don't say silver unless we mean the metal. It is highly unlikely that preservation was the motive; more likely ones are "kids just goofing" and "making pretty shiny to sell as a pendant in a bail." It surely did not involve going to great lengths; you can buy the stuff over the counter and try it on your own with ease. Again, not to nitpick; just to help you gain the most understanding from this.

In the 1970’s through the 1990’s, guys who worked in photo labs often took nice shiny new cents and put them in process C-41 Fixer that had been heavily used and it VERY quickly plated those cents with actual real honest to goodness silver. If you left them like that, they resembled 1943 cents. But if you took some nice soft cotton, like from an old flannel shirt, and polished it up, they looked kinda sorta like prooflike coins. 

[pigeonman333rd]

That explains alot thanks