Posted on 04/01/2021 6:50:38 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Zinc pennies have been the norm for decades. Most of the copper ones have been pulled from circulation.
The pennies they make nowadays, which are mostly zinc, are easily destroyed. Even a little salt will corrode them.
My cousin lived in a railroad town. Of course we put pennies on the tracks. They’d get flattened out pretty nicely (this was back when pennies were made from copper. They’d be warm after being flattened.
I still find the copper pennies, although the zinc ones outnumber the copper cents.
I save pennies dated 1981 or earlier.
In 1982 is when the changeover started.
Unfortunately, modern one cent coins have only a thin cladding of copper.
My daughter worked at a Domino’s a few years ago. One night some derelict came in and tried to pay for his pizza with a bag of weed. When the cops arrived, they checked and it was just dried oregano.
Copper coated steel, not zinc.
I had a guy try to tip me with a pack of cigarettes one time. Scratch tickets are a surprisingly popular tip item. Sometimes they’re scratched, and you can see it’s worth $3, sometimes they’re not scratched.
I used to do that as a kid when we were at the lake. There was a rail line between the cabin and the lake, so when we went boating we would put a coin on the tracks. The train would roll through, and then we had a hunt for the flattened coin/coins.
Harmless, cheap fun.
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