What Happened To This 1984 Cent

It looks like its been a fire or some type of heat and to used open a can being magnetic thats new to me, but someone may know why on this site

No regular fire can make zinc magnetic. Zinc alloys are magnetic - at 35 Kelvins (minus 230°C, or minus 400°F), but not at room temperature.

The only way I can imagine a zinc cent being made magnetic is if you heated it nice and hot (but not too hot; zinc melts at 900°C and burns at 1000°C) while packed in iron filings or some such, so some of the bits of iron stick to the surface to give the cent a coating of iron. If you heated it to about 700-750°C, that might do the trick, but I'm just guessing here. I imagine that getting blasted by some sort of modern industrial iron-spray-coating device would have a similar effect, but the only reason I can think of for doing either of these is to answer the question, "Can we make make a penny magnetic?".

Could it be a mint error? Was the mint experimenting with steel cents in the 1980's? Other countries that stopped using solid bronze for low-denomination coins (e.g. Great Britain) have switched to copper-plated steel, so it's not impossible, I guess. But then you'd have to ask how it got in that condition...

The third possibility is that it's some sort of fake. I know, it sounds stupid - who would want to make a fake cent out of steel or cast iron

So there you have it - three highly improbable explanations. Can anyone else refute or explain?