1982 D Mint Lincoln Cent Small Date

to the CCF!

It's not the coin you're looking for. This coin is a large date. Sorry.

does the top look like small date?

Thanks I will try to educate myself a bit more I wish my vision allowed me to know the difference but your input helps and goes a long way I appreciate it so much hopefully I will find something worth posting thanks again!

Don't beat yourself up over it. Look carefully at Yokozuna's post above. The secret is in the curve of the small date 2. Memorize what it looks like, and believe me, you'll be seeing the small date 82's everywhere! You'll wonder why you didn't see the difference before. All of us started learning all this somewhere, it just takes a bit of time... you'll get it, you'll see.

When I search through cent rolls and I come across a small date 82-D I make a little pile of them to weigh later. I treat them as one-cent lottery tickets, lol. Other 82 cents gets thrown in the discard pile to re-roll (after a quick look for DDO). I weigh each 82-D one at a time, looking for the magic numbers of 3.1 (for copper) to show up, but my luck hasn't gone that way yet... only 2.53 (for zinc) has been appearing. So far they haven't paid off, but you never know! You have to play the game to win it! The search continues!

Because they are common 1982-D LARGE date cents. Weight (therefore composition) is only part of the equation.

This might be confusing, but there are EIGHT different 1982 cents. Four of them are ZINC (82-P Large date, 82-D Large date, 82-P Small date & 82-D Small date), and four of them are COPPER (82-P Large date, 82-D Large date, 82-P Small date & 82-D Small date). Seven of these are fairly common, it's only the 82-D Copper that is the super rare coin.

I used the "P" above to denote the Philadelphia mint, but we all know in 1982 the Philly mintmark is not used.

I hope me listing all 8 varieties helps! It does get confusing!

2.5 cents are zinc cents.
3.11 cents are copper cents

Note there is no small date copper cent from Denver?