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 Replies: 8 / Views: 1,205 |
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New Member
United States
36 Posts |
I found this 1953 Lincoln 1c last night, in a bag of wheats. Looks like some kind of plating on it. It's a fake, I assume. Any thoughts?  |
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Rest in Peace
United States
1943 Posts |
It's not a fake. It is just plated. I have several of these. One possibility is someone rubbed mercury over it years ago when thermometers were still available with mercury in them. When I was a kid I heard of people taking the mercury out of a broken thermometer and rubbing it over copper pennies to make them a silver color.
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
36415 Posts |
I agree, looks like some kids were playing with mercury back in the 50's and coated this one.
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
2805 Posts |
Don't touch it!
Mercury is absorbed through the skin, and it also evaporates into mercury vapour which is breathed in. Both of these are bad. Even when amalgamated onto a copper cent, I'd be very careful - if you want to keep it, put it into an air-tite. Otherwise, take a lit candle outside, grab your mask, gloves and tongs, and heat off the mercury. Make sure nobody's around, too.
This might sound overly cautious, but we should make up for when mercury was viewed as "pretty cool stuff" with no harmful effects...
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Pillar of the Community
 United States
2448 Posts |
Quote:
Mercury is poisonous and can enter the body through the respiratory tract, the digestive tract or directly through the skin. It accumulates in the body, eventually causing severe illness or death.
If you think it was coated with Hg, get rid of it now! I believe that Hg from a broken thermometer leeched into my wife's wedding ring and formed an amalgam looking like the white gold of her ring. Her constant contact was the reason she contracted a rare, obscure cancer.
If you don't want to get rid of it, take it to a jeweler and have the Hg removed. When a friend, who was a jeweler, looked at my wife's ring one day and asked why the yellow gold had worn off her ring. She relayed the story of how my oldest son had broken the thermometer and how the mercury has immediately migrated to the ring. He had her remove the ring immediately and took it to his shop to remove the Hg.
One year later, she had her first operation to remove part of her intestines because of a rare type of cancer. It later came back and took her 24 years later after a 6 year battle. |
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
2805 Posts |
Heat will remove it (my dad once coated his mother's gold ring in mercury, but he thought fast before she came home and put it over a candle), but then it will all be released at once as highly toxic fumes. So ask an expert or go to one of those toxic waste disposal places - you can do it yourself but you must take all precautions.
It's a neurotoxin, so I'm not sure if it can cause mystery cancer, but it can paralyze you for sure and take away a few dozen IQ points.
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Moderator
 Australia
16805 Posts |
It's also entirely possible that it's been electroplated with something relatively harmless, like zinc. I can see a small gap in the plating on the rim at the top where copper is showing. This is a common feature of electroplated coins; the wire used to complete the circuit may have been attached here, and broken off once the plating job was finished.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
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Pillar of the Community
United States
807 Posts |
The safest way to deal with mercury is to convert it into (nearly) harmless mercuric sulphide, otherwise known as cinnabar or vermilion. Unfortunately, the most direct way to do this involves heating it with highly toxic, explosive hydrogen sulphide gas...
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Bedrock of the Community
Australia
21786 Posts |
I think that most of us who have extensive collections wind up with at least one or two plated coins.
I have about a dozen of them from various countries, as well as the U.S.
They are all in nice condition, but bought very cheaply.
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Replies: 8 / Views: 1,205 |
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Posted 08/11/2013 12:53 pm
