What happens to Lincoln Cents when they are left in the ground for a few MONTHS?
At the beginning of the metal detecting season this year I chose a part of the field I hunt in occasionally to be a test area. I seeded it with various Lincoln Cents minted AFTER 1982, the year the cent changed from mostly copper planchet to a “copper coated” zinc planchet.
Copper can last a long time in the ground, a very long time. Centuries can pass and if the ground is not overly moist the coin will hardly corrode. Zinc, on the other hard, is VERY reactive to water and if the tiniest scratch on the copper coating gets down to the zinc core, that coin (especially here in the northeast U.S.) is doomed if dropped onto the ground.
Above is one of the “zinc-lincs” I dug after it was a few months just below the surface of the ground. It made its way about an inch and a half below the root line of the grass. Notice the white crust over almost the entire coin, that is corrosion of the zinc itself. See how the coin has cracked and even broken in places.
On the right is a Large Cent minted in 1819 and was dug from a Civil War site several months ago. It was in the ground for nearly 130 years but look at the difference. Some corrosion and pitting has taken place but the coin is still very much identifiable and has not loss much of its mass at all to the dissolving action of water.
The switch from an all copper planchet to a copper coated zinc planchet has nothing to do with the durability and longevity of the coins. In fact, the zinc coins will soon start to disappear over time and become MORE valuable to collectors over the years. The switch was made purely for economic reasons.
Did you ever wonder why the U.S. Mint cranks out billions of cents each year? Billions and billions of cents. Not because there is a great demand for the denomination. It is one of the least used coins in circulation. It is because the cost of making a cent is less than the value of the cent itself. The U.S. Mint was MAKING money by pressing billions of cents and putting them into circulation.
But when the price of copper began to rise and the break-even point was being neared in the production of copper cents the government decided that they enjoyed making money by “making money” so they switched to a less expensive base metal for the planchets in 1982; zinc. Since then the U.S. Cent (commonly referred to as a “penny”) has been copper coated zinc.
Well, the break even point is being neared again and this time there is no cheaper base metal to make the planchets from. Look for the “ban the cent” crowd to get more influential because money talks and the cent might walk. After the Lincoln Cent celebrates it centennial in 2009 with a redesigned reverse look for it to be retired and no more cents to be made.
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on Tuesday, November 14th, 2006 at 6:01 pm and is filed under Adult Pastimes.
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