Coin color 0

[Jgillette]

I came across this 1956 D wheat penny and the color is a lot lighter than I have seen. Could someone tell me what caused the lighter color? The top coin in the pic is the one and the bottom two are for comparison. Thank you

Edited September 5, 2021 by Jgillette
Misspellings

[Lem E]

Hello and welcome. I’m going to say it has been plated at some point. No value over face.

[DWLange]

Over the years many novelty companies have given coins a very thin wash of low-fineness gold to sell them in sets. It's still being done with State and ATB quarters.

[GBrad]

On 9/5/2021 at 1:00 AM, Jgillette said:

I came across this 1956 D wheat penny and the color is a lot lighter than I have seen. Could someone tell me what caused the lighter color? The top coin in the pic is the one and the bottom two are for comparison. Thank you

I totally agree with both @Lem E and @DWLange comments above. One other observation here, if I may add, is that the coin at the top is a copper 1956 Cent. The other two coins pictured look like 2020 and 2006 Lincoln’s, best I can tell from your pic, which have a zinc core and a very thin layer of copper coating. The mint switched over to a completely different alloy for Lincolns in 1982. Solid copper cents (meaning solid for the most part without goin into all of the details) will tend to darken in color over time versus the zinc cents (even though they can darken as well). Another plausible explanation as to the lighter color for a cooper Cent is that it has been polished in some type of way which equates to damage. I have found numerous Linc’s that look like yours that didn’t appear to be plated but more like highly polished. Any of the above could be the culprit here.

[Mohawk]

I'm with LemE, DW Lange and GBrad......definitely a plated cent.

[Jgillette]

Thank you! I had not seen a penny that color before and couldn’t figure it out

[VKurtB]

On 9/5/2021 at 1:13 PM, Jgillette said:

Thank you! I had not seen a penny that color before and couldn’t figure it out

There are lots of things done for fun in old school chemistry sets. Oh, and old school film processing laboratories too. I must have made several hundred plated cents in C-41 process Fixer over the years.

Edited September 5, 2021 by VKurtB

[Mohawk]

On 9/5/2021 at 4:11 PM, VKurtB said:

There are lots of things done for fun in old school chemistry sets. Oh, and old school film processing laboratories too. I must have made several hundred plated cents in C-41 process Fixer over the years.

Yeah...we made a ton of zinc plated cents in my chemistry class my junior year of high school....as did all of the other chemistry classes.  There were "silver" cents floating around in circulation in my area for a while after that one.