Update On 1982 LMC Find Rates

Soooo ... I just passed through 6 boxes of cents searched (15,000 coins).

I have been weighing all my 1982 & 1983 LMC on a digital scale with 0.01g resolution.

Trying to find the elusive (impossible?) 1983 LMC struck on a copper planchet. No Joy there.

Also enjoying the statistics of the 1982 copper vs zinc planchets. That's the purpose of this post ... an update on the 1982 find rate statistics.

Keep in mind that I live on the Right Coast of the USA ... outside Baltimore MD .... so as you can see below my finds tend to be mostly Philly mint coins (89.8% Philly in the case of the 1982 LMC).

1982 Philly Cents:

Weighed 397 total
Found 349 copper
Copper find rate is 87.9%

Also checking all the zinc Philly mints for the rare DDR ... FS-01-1982-1801. No Joy on that either.

1982 Denver Cents:

Weighed 45 total
Found 38 copper
Copper find rate is 84.4%

Fun Projection:

I am not aware that the US Mint has documented the date at which they converted 1982 LMC production from copper to zinc planchets ... but we can use my Philly mint data above to take an educated guess.

Granted my sample size is small ... and if you allow for the error in small-sample statistics ... follow me on this ...

Assume that the Philly mint struck all the copper LMC first, then converted to zinc ... so 87.9% of the year was spent striking copper 1982 Philly LMC ... which is 365*.879 ... which is 321 days of 1982 Philly copper LMC production.

Soooo ... I claim the date at which Philly started minting zinc 1982 LMC is appx November 18, 1982. Assuming of course the mint worked every day of the year!

For my next update I will research the 1982 Mint operations schedule and have a much better estimate of the date!

Enjoy

David