Is it just my eyes, or do the features on zincs, especially the dates, wear down a lot faster than on coppers? Or is it just that the zincs aren't stamped as deeply? Or is it both? It seems like a lot of the dates on coppers seem more prominent than on zincs. Then again, isn't zinc softer than copper anyway?
Zincs aren't stamped as deeply. I think they aren't stamped deeply because then the zinc would bleed thru the thin copper layer. On copper they didn't have to worry about that.
I also seem to notice that most of my corroded cents, turn out to be zinc.
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There is a very distict differance in 1970's Canadian Copper Pennies vs modern Steel and Zinc Pennies (Cu coated). I can spot the 70's coins without seeing the date because they are stamped deeper/more relief. The modern pennies are not pressed as deep or hard. I agree with Tourney64 - might be because of the plating.
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The Mint has been very gradually reducing relief on coins in order to squeeze more life out of their dies and presses. I think the amount of relief in a coin is inversely proportional to its circulation life; in other words, a low relief coin won't live as long as a high relief one. There comes a point when lowering the relief too far will result in more coins being needed to replace the less-durable cheap ones.
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Heh, i'm glad to see i'm not the only one who thinks that the new Washington portrait looks ridiculous.
i've noticed that the weak strike problem seems especially bad on 1998-2002 pennies, and that the mint improved things a bit after that. A lot of the Y2K pennies in particular look like they were just sketched on the planchet with a pencil.
For some reason, i get a surprisingly large number of zincs that have partially dissolved... i've had some that were missing a good 15-20% of the metal.
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Wear patterns on zincs vs. coppers
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Posted - 06/08/2008 : 04:36:33
