Best Of

@RogerB said:
The mint tried several ways of handling bronze shell cases. The casing alloy was commonly 85% Cu and 15% Zn. Brass did not work very well for direct recycling - it became too brittle. In later 1943 box car loads of shells came into the San Francisco Mint. In melting these, the mint found that there was too much zinc volitization, plus the mints were not set up for mass melting of this material. Eventually, the casings were sent to a Mint contractor who melted them into bars of about 1,000 oz. and 10% zinc. The mints melted these and added sufficient pure melted copper to bring the alloy to standard. This occurred through 1947 and likely later.

Archive documents refer only to use of domestic shell casings from training camps, however there is some anecdotal material indicating savage of 5-inch naval shells.

Copper-based coinage alloys are subject to a wide range of discoloration. This can be attributed to environmental factors, contamination and heat, among many.

To me, the real story is much more interesting and valuable than any imaginary concoction.

Thx for this detail. (I am not clear on the part about how they took shells made of "85% Cu and 15% Zn" and had them melted into "bars of about 1,000 oz. and 10% zinc" unless other copper was added by the refinery, but you mentioned that the additional copper was added later by the Mint, but I won't worry about that for now).

The big takeaway for me was this comment: "The mints melted these and added sufficient pure melted copper to bring the alloy to standard. This occurred through 1947 and likely later."

Based on that statement, the "shell casing" cents are not a different alloy. It is just that they (some? all?) were made with copper salvaged from shell casings rather than newly mined metal. This is the part of the story that gets inadvertently misrepresented as it is repeated over and over by different people.

Nice thread. Those replicas would be awesome to own.

Mormon gold is on my wish list of coins I hope Dan Carr will do a fantasy strike of one day 🤞🏼

That speaks volumes for the folks at PCGS.

@crazyhounddog I'm glad you were able to get most of your coins back and regraded. A bit of a happy ending to very sad and traumatic event.

Wishing you and your family the best.

Donato

Fantastic

Humanity can shine brightly.

Love that toned gold!

@Realone said:

@3keepSECRETif2rDEAD said:

@Realone said:

@jmlanzaf said:

@Realone said:

@Catbert said:
In the interim

@lkeigwin said:
Keets asked for an overlay using a high grade example from Coinfacts. Here you go.

These things are never perfect due to all the aspects that must be aligned -- size, orientation, rotation, square im

Can someone please explain to an ole dumb dumb how this photo overlay is supposed to help? I wish it came with instructions.
Thanks

The photo overlay is supposed to show that the design elements do (or do not) overlap exactly. Frankly, it is indicative but not definitive. If it did NOT match, then it came from a different die. If it does match, then it could still be made from transfer dies or from a much better counterfeit.

and which are which?

...so to you it’s genuine then

I really wish it was, but I cannot figure out the revolving photos, too confusing. I have compared previously the stills and believed the coin was a fake. I still believe it is a fake but my mind is open to it being genuine. I want it to be genuine but it looks so weird.

...don’t let your eyes fool you then cause if you can’t tell which is which of the overlay photos than to your eyes, the coin is genuine...thats the point of doing an overlay, if there are noticeable differences between photos then there is a problem...if not then twins, that’s all