Hello, new member here. I came across a silver-colored 1969D penny about 30 years ago. I suspected that it might have been struck on the wrong planchet. According to the 2012 Official Red Book, the dies were changed in 1969 to make Lincoln's head smaller. I also read an article several years ago that mentioned that the mint tested these new dies using zinc planchets. I can no longer find the article; however I still believe that they may have done so and that some of those coins accidentally made it into circulation. It seems that several other people on the internet have found silver-colored 1969D pennies. Most have dismissed them as electroplated fakes, but given the die change, could this actually have been minted by the government?
The US Mint strikes coins for other countries. Your cent may have been struck on a planchet for a foreign coin.
Nice pics. You have to be realistic when evaluating the chances of the coin being one thing or another. We know science-class (and idle-hands) plating to be a very common thing, to the extent that 999 of 1000 of these are from that cause. I haven't heard the zinc test strike idea before, but it's plausible, zinc being easy to strike and cheap. An off planchet is certainly in play, as well. A weight accurate to 0.01g would tell the difference between copper and zinc, but any sort of plating wouldn't change the weight enough to matter. At that point, the only possible additional data would probably require XRF analysis, and then somebody with a reputation would have to make a decision.
Hello everyone, Thank you all for your replies. I first thought the same thing as most of you do, that is that it's electroplated. However when looking at examples that I know to be plated examples you can tell they are plated. Some loss of fine detail is usually present. I don't have a precision scale to weigh it on, so for now that's out. I will check with magnet and post it here. What I can say, although it's not very scientific, you can here the difference between this coin and a regular 69'penny. The same way a silver coin sounds different from a post 1965 coin when dropped on a table. I don't think plating would cause this to happen.
Some good suggestions already. An accurate weight will likely rule out a zinc planchet. Whatever you do though, don't scratch it to see if it's plated.
