2000 Sacagawea 1 1

[J P M]

 Going through some old coin finds this weekend. I have owned this coin for 23 years. It looks like a old copper cent. The coin is 88.5% copper. The toning is the same as the day I found it. You can see that it has very little wear. I had it in a bag with other 2000 Sac, coins. You can see where it had a couple of small hits where the gold color is showing under the brown tone. The question of the day is why did this coin tone in the first year of issue? There are stories of this coin having problems with the new metal mix of the coin. Also, a story of an experimental dip used to keep the coin stable, conducted at the mint. Feel free to say what you think it may or may not be. I thought it may be a good one to speculate on for Holiday fun.

[powermad5000]

I took a break from coins and the chat board for the holiday. As you graciously asked for opinions, I will gladly give my humble opinion.

Regardless of the amount or lack thereof circulation, this to me looks like either was stored very poorly or was part of an individual experiment such as let's see what happens if we leave it outside for a while, or it was dropped somewhere and later found. To me it looks like environmental damage.

The question I have for you is did you get this coin like this and add it to the bag or was it part of a bag that they were all "golden" and this is the only one that changed over time? Your answer might make me adjust my answer.

[J P M]

On 12/26/2023 at 1:30 PM, powermad5000 said:

I took a break from coins and the chat board for the holiday. As you graciously asked for opinions, I will gladly give my humble opinion.

Regardless of the amount or lack thereof circulation, this to me looks like either was stored very poorly or was part of an individual experiment such as let's see what happens if we leave it outside for a while, or it was dropped somewhere and later found. To me it looks like environmental damage.

The question I have for you is did you get this coin like this and add it to the bag or was it part of a bag that they were all "golden" and this is the only one that changed over time? Your answer might make me adjust my answer.

Thanks for the comment. I find sometimes people do not like to speculate. I found the coin as is and less than a year old and just put it in the bag with the others. I also think it is a posable experiment because the overall toning is perfectly even. It is not like a coin that was laying on the dirt, where one side would be different than the other with posable surface scratches. However now that 23 years have passed, I do notice some pitting in the fields that I did not see when I put it away. 

Edited December 26, 2023 by J P M

[powermad5000]

I think without speculating it would not be possible to come up with reasonable conclusions to situations that have occurred. I think speculation gives someone a list of things to go off of and then use thought to try to cross things off the list.

It could also be possible that someone was attempting to fake an error for "clad layer missing" and the result didn't turn out exactly plausible. Not sure exactly when the explosion of faking everything began.

[EagleRJO]

I would speculate that since that was the first year the mint came out with the new golden colored dollar coins that they had to make some initial adjustments to the alloy mix and annealing, and maybe some of the earlier attempts may have just resulted in that brown toning after a short period.