Mystery Silver Color Penny

I will try to figure this out and get you an answer. It feels similar to a normal one but that's pretty unscientific. I don't have a scale and I'm brand new to sorting through coins because my 4 year old thinks piles of coins are cool. First time I've ever seen a steel penny too, but that was an easy google search.

Aluminum would be easy to rule out if it's weight is about the same as a copper cent, given how lightweight Al is.

Most likely answer to the solution is zinc plated, like your steel cents would be.

An accurate weight would definitely help a bit to determine if it's slightly overweight. Can you post a cropped shot of the obverse and reverse of just the coin in question?

to CCF. Weight would be very helpful. I have seen them before, but thought it is just a plated coin like from a school science project.
John1

Interesting:- shows signs of mint luster.
Coins that have been plated after issue into circulation do not show this feature.

We need results of weight and magnetic tests and reverse picture, otherwise we are just speculating.

My 'speculation' without this information, is that is a high quality shed job, die struck fake, dies made by the explosive impact method. You need a highly equipped workshop to make explosive impact copy dies.
Need high magnification pictures to consider the possibility 2nd generation copy dies. 2nd generation copies tend to be a little 'mushier' with the fine details.

I don't want to get your hopes up because it's probably, and most likely plated, but it COULD be a cent on a dime stock/planchet, there's been at least one example sold at heritage auctions for 1973-D.

what does the edge look like? weight might not be a"tell" here if the clad dime metal was punched out to cent size, or mint Weight Tolerance is on the low side for the regular dime size planchet 2.3g, and if struck in a cent collar, usually they aren't complete if it's a dime size planchet and no formed rim, but it's common as this type of thing goes, because the dime planchets fit into the cent collars on the press.
this is about as good as it gets other show less rim, your shows full rim. either minted on cent sized dime stock planchet, OR plated Id' have to say.
https://www.fredweinberg.com/produc...-PCGS-ms-64/

A lot of things maybe. but 99.99% of the time, someone plated it with something. Slight possibility on a 2.5g silver dime planchet also, but even less likely, but those spread out further and picked up nice full strikes.

pictures of reverse and edge also please. thank you.
whole lot of "ifs".

A cent blank punched from dime stock would weigh 2.42 grams so weight would identify that.

The U.S. Mint struck coins for Panama during 1973, including tenth balboas struck on clad Roosevelt dime material planchets.