Is It Copper? 1982 D Lincoln Cent

Arc, where exactly are you "sending it off" to?

An appraisal/grading co.
Why?

Do you know exact dates of the coins you weighted? What did pre-1982 cents weight? What did any cents after 1982 weigh?

Do you know exactly where to send your coin for grading? It costs about $50, plus if you want an error label on it, there is an extra fee, plus you have to pay for return shipping, and send it to them insured. It's going to cost you just south of $100, you sure you want to do this?

It is only the copper 1982D that are valuable

I'm seeing a small date '82 as well. just need a better more accurate weight measurement.

It's not going to cost you $100 to have the coin graded, but it's not cheap either.

Getting one coin graded at PCGS, for instance, will cost you about $50, including shipping both ways and grading fee. Getting 10 coins graded lowers the per coin cost to about $30, because the shipping costs are about the same and can be divided among all the coins.

However, buying an inexpensive scale from Amazon that shows weight to two decimal points will cost you about $10 and should give you a definitive answer to the copper or zinc question.

Seems to make more sense to spend the $10 first as if it turns out to be zinc then you've saved $50.

It appears to be a small date (the photos could be better) and the scale you're using could be rounding down from 2.99g to 2.9g (I'm assuming the scale is calibrated properly. You can easily figure that out.) 2.99g would be just within the tolerances of a copper cent (3.11g +/- .13g), so there's a chance . . .

Having said that, there's only been a handful of these found (someone will chime in with the exact number, but I think it's been less than 6) so I would temper your expectations accordingly.

Please let the forum know what you figure out.

The color seems more like a zinc coin. You could possibly do a density test?

It's the small date version of the 1982 D in copper that are sought because, officially, none were made.

I know of one that sold in 2017 or 2018 for about $18,000. Don't know exactly how many have been found since then, but suspect it's very few.