My Lincoln Cents Are Turning Black

Scarry. You said FOLDER. I hope you don't have good coins in a FOLDER. The difference in folders from albums is the folder is just that, a folder with slots for each coin that has to be pressed into slots. You can not see the reverse of a coin in a folder. An Album is like a book with pages that have plastic type slides where you can see both sides of a coin. If in a folder, most of your coins will have been contaminated eventually. From the looks of the coins you displayed the damage is on the left sides mostly. Apparently excessive moisture and possibly some Sulfur is present where you keep your coins. Unfortunately this type of damage is none reversable. The contaminate is a combination of the metal and other elements which means if and when removed will take some of the metal with it. The 1944 appears to have been turning from excessive Oxygen, Carbon Dioxide and moistue. This creates CupricCarbonate. The 86 appears to have been exposed to something even more corrosive. Almost all Copper contaminates turn greenish including exposure to Sulfur, Oxygen, Carbon Dioxide and even Chlorines and Florines. That is the normal Crystaline color of Copper compounds.
Please examine the location of the coins and let us know what you find.
Please note if in an actual folder, the backing page is glued to a cardboard, slotted page. This glue has been known to corrode coins over a period of time. Please let us know if in an album or folder.

Coppercoins,

I also have my Lincolns in an album. I recently sold all my Reds and switched to Brown because I didn't want to worry about toning. Even though they're brown, do you still suggest keeping them in airtights or 2 x 2 flips? Also what are "archival safe flips"?

I've been using Whitman Classic Albums since they came out. I used the Whitman Albums previous to those before that. I now have well over 100 of those Whitman Classic Albums and in general, most are full. Each one is in a freezer type, zip lock bag with as much air pressed out as possible. I've been doing this for many, many years. Of course prior to zip lock bags, I just used plastic bags. NONE, I mean NONE of my coins have toned, corroded, tarnished. I've been collecting coins for well over 60 years and many of the coins I have are from when I was a kid back in the early 1940's. As long as air and moisture does not get to the coins easily, nothing will happen. I live in a high humidity area, Chicago, and as I've said, NONE of my coins look different from the day I put them in the Albums. Possibly they may start to change in a few hundred years. If so I'll let you know.
The coins as shown definately were exposed to something. As I said, even normal C, O and Co2 will begin to change Copper coins. However, one of those coins with the black corrosion must have been exposed to something much worse.

The coins pictured were in the whitman classic folder, the problem is they were in a big wooden hinged box, you know the kinds they sell with Budweiser or winchester logo's on them. for probably a good 12+ years. heck the last ones in there were 1993's I got out of BU rolls I picked up from where I worked that year.

I know, me stupid

I always had problem with coppers changing colors and getting spots that is why I stopped collecting them. there were even a few early UNC's that I bought years ago that spots showed up within a month of when I bought them.

Not all of them are ruined some of the worse ones are the Zinc but some of the coppers are pretty nasty looking, a few finger prints have even showed up on some of them.

At least the Circ. keys and semi-keys that I had are still OK

My father gave me his cent collection, which was basically a bunch of common dates. They were in a cardboard folder for 20 years. It actually worked out for me that the coins turned brown. I like my coins to look even, not have brilliant red next to brown. His 1950s wheaties were mostly AU-UNC and brown. Try finding an MS-brown 1950s wheat. It's very difficult.

There was also a lot of well worn, older dates. Those act as nice temporary hole fillers. So I can focus on the remaining holes, EF or better and complete the set much quicker. After that I can just do upgrades at my leasure.