Sunday Evening Finds- Splitting Penny?

Hi jpbbennett,

Welcome to metal detecting. Once bitten by the MD bug, a person often has a life long affliction.

All Lincoln pennies from 1909 to mid-year 1982 were made of a solid bronze alloy except 1943 was made of steel. From mid-year 1982 to the present they have been made from zinc blanks that are copper coated. These are often called zinc pennies.

The blemish you see on your 1990 penny is the copper peeling off of the zinc blank. These blemishes are very common for zinc pennies that have been in the ground for even a very short time. As time goes by you will find many more like it. In fact you are likely to find some that have segments of the coin completely corroded away. Usually the older bronze pennies hold up much better in the ground than the zinc pennies do.

BTW Lincoln pennies had wheat backs till 1958.


Good Luck
Hunt4Fun

Thanks Hunt. I actually think I may have determined why this one was bubbled. I used CLR on these to clean them up and the one that bubbled was in a little longer. Wouldn't have thought anything of it, but I had three pennies I found yesterday that I put in CLR last night. Long story short, I forgot them until this evening and when I got back to them the rim on one was in real bad shape. A couple of the others were badly pitted. It probably didn't help that they were in the ground a while, but I think I was my own worst enemy in this case. Check out the photos of my finds on the board to see the damage.

Thanks for all the info.

JPB I clean my pennies by tumbling them in aquarium gravel with soap and kaboom and my nics, dimes and quarters with soap and CLR for about 30 minutes.
Just pocket change. Not keepers.