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Us Pennies Composition, Weights & Tid's For The Ctx3030 & Etrac


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GB, I'm thinking you might need to break down and purchase an XRF or subject your prize IH's to the dreaded OES test. Nothing like a vaporized piece copper alloy.  Either way its for the good of Detector Prospector and its loyal members. Ha Ha 

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9 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

I assume when you say '0.25' in the tin and zinc columns you mean 0.025.  I'm curious where you got these numbers.  The tin&zinc numbers you show are inconsistent with what I've found for the Lincoln series.  I'm also curious as to what coins you used to determine the CTX3030 dTID's -- were they dug coins or undug?

I've been unable to find the tin&zinc breakdown for the bronze Indian Heads.  See post I made a week or so ago for the Lincoln Cent compositions by year with referecnes, some of those detailed in earlier posts in that same thread:

Correction to chart: 62-82 has .950 copper and .05 zinc. no tin. oops on my part copied it down wrong.

plus they should be .025

 

9 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

 

Ok, lots of corrections here. I should not have created this chart from the very small print out of "A Guide Book of United States Coins  2019 by R.S. Yeoman, 72nd edition when I had this head cold.

Here is the corrected file. I hope I got it right this time, I don't wish to mislead anyone with bad info.

The test was an air test on ground I cleared with my CTX3030  to make sure no other metal items were in the ground. Height was about 7" above the ground using Ferrous-Coin mode. My ground is moderately mineralized but that should not have affected anything since it was an air test.

Sorry for the goofs.

pennies us air test on ctx3030.jpg

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Despite some claims that the composition doesn't matter, it does to some of us.  I appreciate the effort in measuring the CTX3030 responses but the Lincoln Cents never had equal amounts of tin and zinc.  I have 6 of the 75 editions of Yeoman's Red Book, including the latest (2022) version and none of those six says the amount of tin and zinc were equal.

Later this week I will measure the dTID response of 95% coppter Indian Heads and Lincolns with the ML Equinox and will report here.  It will be ineresting to see if the response to the Lincolns (where there is known variation of tin and zinc content as I pointed out in the thread I linked earlier) will correlate to those contents. 

Needless to say you are welcome to use the numbers from that post -- they aren't mine but rather those of Q. David Bowers who coincidentally is currently the Research Editor of the Red Book and has been a contributing editor to more than 3/4 of all the editions of that excellent handbook.

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On 1/16/2022 at 8:53 AM, GB_Amateur said:

Despite some claims that the composition doesn't matter, it does to some of us.  I appreciate the effort in measuring the CTX3030 responses but the Lincoln Cents never had equal amounts of tin and zinc.  I have 6 of the 75 editions of Yeoman's Red Book, including the latest (2022) version and none of those six says the amount of tin and zinc were equal.

Later this week I will measure the dTID response of 95% coppter Indian Heads and Lincolns with the ML Equinox and will report here.  It will be ineresting to see if the response to the Lincolns (where there is known variation of tin and zinc content as I pointed out in the thread I linked earlier) will correlate to those contents. 

Needless to say you are welcome to use the numbers from that post -- they aren't mine but rather those of Q. David Bowers who coincidentally is currently the Research Editor of the Red Book and has been a contributing editor to more than 3/4 of all the editions of that excellent handbook.

I agree. On some years in the red book it said .950 cu and .05 tin & Zinc. So I just split the difference on tin and zinc. Don't really now the ratio of tin and zinc or even where to find it.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

there were some errors on the original chart. here is the updated. 

specifically .25  tin /zinc breakdown should be .025 for each.

 

image.thumb.png.34cbb23e1902f1c9e306924f80ca7b20.png

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There's been much speculation that the United States Cent (we don't use pennies, that's the redcoats) has had a lot of undocumented inconsistencies/changes from the mints for one reason or another. 

A larger sample set would be revealing. Take 200 Indian Head Cents from 1864-1909 and test them, and you will see variations.  Similar occurrences have also been observed on United States Nickles. 

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2 hours ago, Cal_Cobra said:

A larger sample set would be revealing.

Another example of "great minds think alike"?  ?  I've spent the better part of the last several days recording Equinox dTID's on the bench, mostly with the Wheat cent series (50 years x 3 mints, with some missing teeth).  I also measured some IHP's, but only about 30 of those.  These have been done with undug coins.  I have done some spot checking as well with dug cents (14 IHP's and about a similar number of Wheaties) to see if being in the ground for decades makes a difference.

There are some surprises.  (Well, at least some of the results surprised me.)  I should be writing that up tomorrow.  I'm glad others are interested.

I've never heard of 5 cent 'nickel' variations other than for some select dug Wartime (1942-45) 35% silver, 9% manganese versions.  You're talking about 75% Cu, 25% Ni (standard composition) variations in dTID's??

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23 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

Another example of "great minds think alike"?  ?  I've spent the better part of the last several days recording Equinox dTID's on the bench, mostly with the Wheat cent series (50 years x 3 mints, with some missing teeth).  I also measured some IHP's, but only about 30 of those.  These have been done with undug coins.  I have done some spot checking as well with dug cents (14 IHP's and about a similar number of Wheaties) to see if being in the ground for decades makes a difference.

There are some surprises.  (Well, at least some of the results surprised me.)  I should be writing that up tomorrow.  I'm glad others are interested.

I've never heard of 5 cent 'nickel' variations other than for some select dug Wartime (1942-45) 35% silver, 9% manganese versions.  You're talking about 75% Cu, 25% Ni (standard composition) variations in dTID's??

Looking forward to your results. 

@steveg weren't you looking at standard nickle variations?  Or was it war nickles? 

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