Another Question About 1859 1 Cent.

Getting them checked by XRF is the best method. @SPP is a board expert. He may chime in on this.

The coins pictured all look like copper to me. The yellowish one has been cleaned.

Gene

Some bronze, some brass.
When fully patinated, very difficult to tell visually.
Even more difficult for us, when looking at screen pictures.

For 1859, I suspect that the alloy varied quite a lot from batch to batch.


Has there been any definitive research on the alloys for the 1859 issue?
If a table has been published, XRF may well be of good use for comparing a subject coin against a listed coin, as regards alloy mix.

Four of us 1859 research folks got together and wrote an article for the RCNA Canadian Numismatic Journal for the March 2012 edition.... and it was heavily researched. I took 500-600 1859's of mine (enough for a valid statistical evaluation), nearly at random and we put them through SPP's XRF. The coins that I sent were approximately split in equal thirds for early, middle, and late strikings .. based on the width of the vine gap at leaf 7. I also included in the coins sent for XRF approx 20 coins that were distinctly yellow in color/hue. Some coins had been cleaned and some not. There was not a brass one in the whole lot, nor in the few hundred that I sent after the experiment. The actual alloy percentages varied somewhat, but essentially a "bell curve" of copper, zinc and tin with other common metalic elements in very minor percentages ... centered around the 95/4/1 alloy for bronze Cu/Sn/Zn. I have also found that any number of common "under the sink" cleaning agents can turn the bronze coins yellow through chemical reactions .. some more some less.

It is all of our opinions that "brass" 1859's (or possibly other years, were made via accidental problems with mixing/pouring in the crucible/vat, where some of the lighter metals settled on top, resulting in some ingots having much more zinc in them. When the ingots were rolled into sheets through the presses/rollers, very small sections of the sheet may have been more brass than bronze and, when the planchets were punched out, you had the makings of a few "brass cents". Very very few ever made it through to a coinage life. I think that less than 5 are known, but there could be more somewhere somehow. All of us still have the actual chemical alloy analysis for each of the 500+ coins.... mine's somewhere in my crapola. Any RCNA can got to the RCNA website and read the 2012 article through the library/archives.

Yes, and 2 of the posters in that thread are two that also did the "brass" research study with the XRF .. Bosox and me (I was BillinBurl then). Our opinions haven't changed. It USED to be, through ICCS, that you could take an 1859 out into the sun and scratch the edge with a piece of glass .. .and then let the sun shine down directly on the scratch. If it was brass, the scratch would be "yellow" and that's how ICCS certified them ... with a scratch with a piece of glass, no XRF yet. I think that there are fewer than the 25 that Rob mentions, maybe because there are more scientific methods other than scratches.