Altered Surface Cleaned Penny?

Just looked up the double HP. Very clearly doubled die, the extra thickness and notches.

I have a close up photo of the REG which shows MD nicely. I have more photos but this is the nicest.

This penny is really red, just caught my eye with that fresh copper colour. I've seen acid cleaned pennies and I thought this sort of look cleaned after closer inspection. They have all sorts of chemicals in the back room and all sorts of acids. They do a lot of experiments with pennies thus my suspicion that it was cleaned. I've rescued some copper ones (this is one of the rescues) from being experimented on, but I don't care too much for the other zinc core ones.

I've only got about 5 give or take, including a Mary Gillick portrait one, since they weren't very willing to give them out. But it's 5 less pennies going to scrap nonetheless They say they can't get them anymore, so if I have any spare pennies I could donate them. I'm not willing to give them out either (I like copper), I tell them to go to the bank, they still have lots of them.

Ones I'm sure they do to pennies are cleaning (I saw some that were cleaned very badly, they had a totally unnatural "shine" to them even though they look very worn and scratched up) and plating (to make gold, well actually it's brass, pennies).
Maybe they sacrifice some too for copper electrodes, who knows if they do, but I did use a rotten zinc core one for a cathode.

Good thing George was not in the pile. They seem to have hidden their penny stock from me though.