1991-P missing plating

[coppercoins]

First things first:

1. The zinc blanks are cut THEN plated. I have a complete set from blank to coin, and have a zinc blank that is unplated. Simple enough, a coin without the plating simply missed the plating step in the process.

2. It's impossible for the sheet to be plated then the blanks cut. If this were so, cents would be bare zinc on their edges.

3. If the coin is silver in color it can only be three things. First, plated in something like mercury or nickel. Second, an acid removed the copper. Third, it's genuinely struck without the copper. Only the third of these, the genuine one, will exhibit luster. On the other two the luster will be removed or covered.

4. Weighing the coin will do no good. The copper comprises only 2.5% of the weight of the coin, and with the tolerances in normal weight for a coin, this isn't enough to definitively tell whether the coin really weighs less than it should because of missing copper. That plus even an acid bathed coin will weigh less too, so weight tells you nothing other than the copper layer is missing. It doesn't tell you anything about how it's missing.

I still see the coin posted in this thread as being convincing as genuine, but I do not study (or care about) errors, so I have little experience in the area. Might not be a bad idea to get ahold of someone who knows errors for a living....Rich Schemmer, Fred Weinberg, Mike Byers. They could tell easily whether this is genuine.