How Can One Slow The Development Of Black Spots On Recent Lincoln Pennies

Thanks for your reply. If there are no black spots on the pennies is there a storage environment that will slow the appearance and growth of the black spots?

You try keeping the album in a dry spot with a rechargeable desiccant. It won't completely stop then but I have Lincoln cents that are with me for almost 40 years still looking like they just left the mint. The zincoins are weird, I've pulled them from uncirculated packages that I purchased and were stored in a locked water tight case at low humidity that have developed spots.

If the spot are very small, they are sneeze droplets. If a coin is a darker red in color on the whole coin, it was probably once in a child's mouth.


Carbon spots are on the copper planchets, not the zinc ones.


These are imperfections in the copper mix of the stock material of the planchets. These maybe normal at first and spread later as the coin ages.

Finger prints will also show on cents:



The salts in perspiration alter the coins. They maybe fine when you put them away, but check in a few months. Then you will see there the prints are on your coins.

Putting them in albums, pressing them into the slots with your fingers, guess what? Your fingerprints maybe seen on these coins in the future. Gloves or handing the coins only on the outside edges will help prevent finger prints. But if some else added them before you got the coin? They will show up later. Then it is too late. It has eaten the way thought the surface of your coin. Press them into the album with a new facial tissue. Or store them in hard flips or 2X2's. What happens to a coin before you get it, might surprise you later. And if you attempt to clean a coin it might ruin the future life for that coin. Just a few heads up for collecting coins.

CoopHome: What happened to my beautiful coins? (clue of what to do and not do with the coins you keep)