Can someone tell me whats up with this Lincoln ?

Leonidas

Were some 1953 lincolns plated ?

FredWeinberg

Plated as a novelty item;
not an error of any type.

johnny9434

<< <i>Plated as a novelty item;
not an error of any type. >>

garrynot

My dad used to plate cents just to pass the time. Thank goodness he never did it to anything valuable.

Mercfan

Based on my experience having looked at close to a couple million wheaties, I'd venture a guess that 1953 is the most common date for zinc-plated pre-1959 Lincolns.

My hypothesis is that some widely used high school chemistry textbook or curriculum came out that year and included a lab exercise involving electroplating a U.S. cent. The selection of 1953 may have been in response to the lab instruction that it be a "new" or "clean and shiny" cent--making those most recently released into circulation overwhelmingly the most frequently used.

I was only one in 1953, so I hadn't yet enrolled in high school chemistry. Anybody who took chemistry in about 1953 remember such a lab exercise?

Or, have any of you who've looked at a lot of wheaties seen a different date commonly "silver" plated?