1.99 grams off metal penny

[sparklepost]

1976 no mint mark 1.99 grams? Any suggestions on errors of this variety?

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[MintErrors]

In my opinion, I think clearer photos of the obverse and reverse would be beneficial. There is debris on the reverse of the coin and we need to eliminate or confirm the possibility of environmental damage. I have a helpful post in my signature block to take photos with a cell phone. If it is done with a hand held camera, the best thing to do is stabilize the camera and if possible use a corded remote shutter or blue tooth enabled button that will take the photo(s). It eliminates camera shake and unfocused photos.

[MintErrors]

This forum crashes too much for my liking, so I do smaller posts.

In my opinion, the possibilities are endless but lets focus on the more common ones.
Eliminate those and move on to the next.

Environmental Damage

Thin or Tapered Planchet

Thin planchets are sort of uncommon, but they happened some in the 60's through mid 70's. Planchets were rolled out and the sheets were subject to different thickness from time to time. It does not take much to make the weight vary a good amount. A normal copper / bronze cent weighs 3.11 grams, which is which is about one-ninth of an ounce...a simple hiccup for the rollers and a spot on the sheet of copper bronze is possible.

Same basic thing for tapered planchets.


The coin itself looks like its copper / bronze so I doubt it is an off metal / on wrong planchet coin. All of the design elements (devices) look like a normal Lincoln cent.

To research that rabbit hole, one would have to go through 60 pages of a PDF looking for another country that had planchets or coins produced in the Philadelphia mint in 1976 that were very close in size of a Lincoln cent and very close to the accurate weight of your coin is. That takes a few days to go through each country on the list.....

The list is here. Again - you have to find a coin that weighs very close to what your coin weighs, its the same diameter of the Lincoln cent, made of the same metal that was produced at the Philadelphia Mint in 1976. I personally have my doubts about this coin being off metal / wrong planchet. Here is that 60+ pages of data. I recommend looking at each country and find the date and then see if it was made in Philadelphia. Then look at metal composition and then size. Good luck.

https://minterrornews.com/foreign_coinage_production_figures.pdf