I just bought a 1974 aluminum Lincoln cent on eBay
jonathanb
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I assumed I'd get a plated coin. You can imagine my surprise when I took it out of the envelope and it was clearly aluminum. Weighs 1.005 grams, so definitely not copper.
Unfortunately, it's also definitely not authentic. The dies are HEAVILY polished, with massive detail loss across the board. Look especially at Lincoln's coat, which blends into the field. There is no sign of VDB initials on the truncation of the bust. None of these features match the example in the Smithsonian.
Additionally, all of the lettering has a "mushy" or "pitted" quality that is never seen on US Mint products.
I think this is a spark erosion counterfeit, where the surface of the die was polished smooth to remove the pitting in the fields. That polishing removed much of the details, and wasn't able to remove the pitting from the design elements that were recessed on the die. Once you have counterfeit dies at all, you can strike them on anything. I'm not an expert on counterfeits; maybe someone else can provide more details.
I've never seen even a counterfeit aluminum cent, so I'm happy enough with my $5 purchase for what it is.
Comments
That's one of the more interesting things I've ever seen. Never imagined someone would fake one of those. Did it come from China?
New collectors, please educate yourself before spending money on coins; there are people who believe that using numismatic knowledge to rip the naïve is what this hobby is all about.
From Latvia, actually. I went into this with my eyes open. I'm not surprised or upset with what I got.
Looks neat.
I wonder if ICG will slab it since they formally slab counterfeits and note them as such.
Looks like you got a steal at $5.00. This one from Arkansas went for $217.50:
Get ready to become "Longboard junior" if this is what you hope it is.
Just the one example listed on eBay so far. That seller seems to have mostly Russian stuff (which makes sense, from Latvia). A lot of his Russian pieces have the same general 'look' as this one so I suspect they may be counterfeits also. I don't care to find out for those!
Or Lawrence junior. The 1974-D aluminum cent case was resolved before the 1933 DE case.
I wonder what mercury over a 1974-D would look like.
Ah, good find Zoins. I hadn't seen that one. Might not have bid on this one if I had, but I'm still ok for $5.
The one sold in March may have been from the same source. I see similar weakness in the coat, and the lettering also seems mushy, as much as I can tell.
Cool....certainly fake as you noted, but interesting nevertheless.
Interesting.
A great conversation piece.
A friend has one of those... he thinks it is real.... I told him it was not, but hard to change a person's mind when set - and he is not a coin expert, or even a collector. Not worth pushing it though, as always, these people who have these 'treasures' will only get extremely upset and angry. Cheers, RickO
The authentic 1974 aluminum cents have tremendous strikes and are not flat like the one pictured.
First counterfeit of it I recall seeing -
most interesting, but not surprising
coming from Eastern Europe.
for PCGS. A 49+-Year PNG Member...A full numismatist since 1972, retired in 2022
Interesting and cool for 5 bucks!
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