1974 Aluminum Cents Not Alone

I would say that Pattern has become a very, very loose term but the 1970 clad Peace dollars are one of the biggest mysteries in collecting.

The 1964-d Peace dollars are discussed ad nauseam but the 1970 clad are almost never discussed.

Back when they were preparing for the Sac dollars in 1999, the mint did a production run to test how well the presses would handle the new composition (how well they struck up, what the required press setting needed to be etc) The experimental production run used 2000 W dies. None of these have ever been reported in private hands and apparently the entire production run was destroyed.

We first learned of these from a TV program "Inside the US Mint". As part of the program they were showing how the master hub was created on the Janaver reducing lathe and the model being reduced was a 2000 W Sac dollar! Alan Herbert contacted the Mint about that (since there were no 2000 W Sac dollars struck) and he was told about the experimental production run.



They were copper clad steel and while none have come up for sale on the open market, they are known to be in private hands.



There were 10 to 12 of the pieces that were distributed to lawmakers that were not returned. Only two are definitely known today, the one in the Smithsonian that was foud in a retiring lawmakers desk drawer and sent to the Smithsonian instead of the Mint for destruction, and the Toven specimen supposedly given to a capital security officer by a lawmaker. (The story goes the lawmaker dropped it and the security person picked it up ad tried to retur it to him but was told to just keep it.)

There were 1975 aluminum cents struck, the Coin World Almanac gives the number as 15. These were all destroyed.



This is a curiosity because there are NO records of the Denver mint ever being given any authorization to strike ANY aluminum cents. There would also be no reason to. All the testing was carried out at the Philadelphia mint. There would be no reason to have test strikes made at the Denver mint as well.

Interestingly although the government has been involved in the courts trying to recover the 1974 D aluminum cent they say they never made, they have taken no such steps to recover the Toven 1974 aluminum cent which they DID make and which they say is their property.

If word got out that some one knew where one was they are not going to say in fear the government might take it

I have one of these desired gems that everyone thinks does not exist! If anyone would like to see a pic of the real thing just message me! Love some knowledge on it too and its legality as of 2016?

I assume you mean what would a 1974 aluminum cent weigh. About .9 grams.

Probably somewhere between the weight of a zinc cent and that of a copper one.

Steel has about the same SG as zinc, copper is greater. So a complete steel cent would weigh the same as a zinc cent (and this is correct the 1943 teel cent weighs almost the same as today's zincoln) so the copper clad material would weigh more than the amount of steel displaced. On today's clad coins the clad layers make up about 50% of the coins volume. So some rough figures would indicate that the copper cladding would weigh about .16 grams more than the equivalent amount of steel. So a 1974 copper clad steel cent should weigh around 2.66 grams.

No matter what variety of Stainless I don't think it would be too likely to exceed the SG of copper. My figures were based on the mild steel used in the 43 steel cent. So you could probably accept my figure as a low figure and the weight of a copper cent as a maximum figure.