1941 Lincoln Cent - 54gr. Thick Brass Planchet

very nice coin how much it cost ya :P lol

There are quite a few of these out there. I own three and have owned one or two others. Most weigh 3.4 grams. Their status is unclear. Alan Herbert thinks they were struck on planchets punched out of foreign stock. On the other hand, 1941 produced a bumper crop of normal-weight improper alloy mix errors. These planchets may be derived from rolled thick strip from an improperly mixed ingot of cent alloy.

These coins have sold for between $25 and $125 on ebay. Most EF specimens sell for less than $50. After the last one I sold went for a mere $25, I stopped trying to sell my duplicates.

I'll pull some out. You can contact me directly at mdia1@aol.com.

The Mint would have had many foreign blanks and planchets on hand that fit this description. I'm thinking of some South American coins that we minted for them. Peru had a brass coin on a thick planchet in the 1940s that we struck for them. They were struck on thin planchets as well. There were other countries that we struck coins for as well. I'd guess a foreign planchet that can't be pinned down to a specific one.

The weight of the 1941 planchet does not match anything the Mint was producing that year. The streaky appearance is not typical of brass foreign coins of the time. As for the 1997-D cent, it is not struck on a Singapore 1 cent planchet (the latter is much lighter) nor on a Malyasian 1 sen planchet (the latter is attracted to a magnet). The grading services -- or those whose information they relied on --pulled these identities out of thin air. Right now nobody knows what country they were destined for.

Thanks, Guys, It was a thought of the top of my head with essentially nothing but vague memory to back it up:-)

have Fun,
Bill