1944 george vi penny struck in wrong metal ?

[Adele]

can anyone help me with any info on a couple of the coins my grandfarther left us. one is a 1944 george vi penny .i no they were made in copper ,but this one is silver in colour. struck in the wrong metal my grandfarther led us to believe.also a 1871 wide date penny with other flaws in the metal above and around the date both coins are lovely 

[declanwmagee]

Sounds interesting, Adele - do you have any pictures?

[Adele]

Yes I have several photos but the file size is too large for this forum but feel free to Email me personally at (email removed) where I will be able to send you said photos.

Thanks.

[Rob]

If I were you I would edit the post and remove your email address.

Then save the pictures as a jpeg and resize them if necessary. Photos from a camera usually start out at 1 or 2Mb, but opening with paint and trimming off the excess irrrelevant content, then saving as a jpeg will probably reduce it to a few hundred kb which you can attach. The limit is 500kb.

[Adele]

[Adele]

[Rob]

It has most likely been plated. A silver or nickel plated example might show signs of underlying bronze. A cupro-nickel flan intended for a different issue would be of similar weight to a bronze penny unless of markedly different thickness. The only off-metal strike that would be easy to ascertain would be a normal thickness penny struck in tin. This should be just over 7 grams against the normal 9g+ of a standard bronze penny. What's the weight to a couple decimal places preferably?

[Bernie]

4 hours ago, Adele said:

can anyone help me with any info on a couple of the coins my grandfarther left us. one is a 1944 george vi penny .i no they were made in copper ,but this one is silver in colour. struck in the wrong metal my grandfarther led us to believe.also a 1871 wide date penny with other flaws in the metal above and around the date both coins are lovely 

The pennies struck accidentally in nickel are attracted to a magnet. how about yours ? 

[VickySilver]

It does look as the lower obverse field has been (test?) scratched. I broke through plating by scratching the edge of one. 

I do have a number of OMS pennies and they tend to have similar weights as Rob says, but get a weight in any case. Some have. Even hard gouged that damaged genuine coins ! Uggh!

Host blanks have occasionally been halfcrowns and vice-versa. Plated coins if done thinly can be deceiving but there is a certain flatness to the fields as on this coin as I think I see from the photos.

 

Anyway, hard to tell from just the picture unfortunately. Likely best seen in hand by a reputable dealer - good luck!

Edited January 29, 2017 by VickySilver

[Sword]

I think you might want to use the "ring" test. Put the coin on your forefinger and tap gently on the edge with another coin. Bronze, cupro-nickel, sterling silver, 50% silver all give very different rings when taped. A bronze coin gives a long clear ring. A cupro-nickel coin gives a dull short ring. You can compare the rings of your two 1944 pennies. Since the coin is not in the highest grades, I don't think any harm can be done by this test.