Here is an article by Cindy Calhoun entitled, "How do you handle a problem like a zincer?," republished with permission from the January 2025 issue of The Elongated Collectors' TEC News. Thanks!
-Garrett
Given a choice, elongated coin collectors prefer to roll on pre-1982 copper cents. If you've
heard this and wondered, “why anyone would prefer a dirty old penny over a shiny new one?”, it's because over 40 years ago, the U.S. Mint changed the cent from 95% copper to 99.2% zinc. When a zinc cent is rolled, its very thin copper coating flows and exposes the zinc core, leaving cracks and gray shadows. Exposed to water, cleaners, or even just air, the zinc corrodes.
When the change in composition happened, a lot of private rollers and collectors didn't know that zinc cents would eventually corrode and ruin their work and cherished elongateds. Although some private rollers treated the back of cents with a stain or shoe polish so the year of the coin would remain visible on the reverse after rolling, none treated the front of the coin.
Unfortunately, the option to use our own carefully saved and cleaned copper cents is increasingly unavailable to us as vendors convert their machines to accept credit cards and preload them with zinc cents. So, even the most pro-copper of us need a solution. We all want to preserve our elongateds!
Two of the this issue's elongateds demonstrate the problem and one solution: an older uncoated elongated zinc cent and an older elongated zinc cent sprayed with a copper metallic finish to preserve the image.
For the enclosures, I used Rust-Oleum, Bright Coat, Metallic Finish spray paint. At the WFoM in 2019, the late Ray Dillard excitedly demonstrated this approach for making corroded elongateds readable again. He had made quite a study of different materials and techniques and liked this one best. It's not perfect, but it's a way to read and preserve an unreadable elongated.
Another option some of us have tried is a Krylon copper leaf pen. However, the pens are expensive. When you have more than a few elongateds to do, I would say spraying is the way to go.
If you try the spray paint, start with duplicate zincers or ones you don't care about. Read and follow the instructions on the can. Go outdoors or at least into the garage and open the door. Lay out newspaper to protect surfaces. Apply a very light coat. Too heavy a coat fills in the engraving and covers the details.
If you trade or sell coated elongateds, please be upfront with your partners and customers. Specify that the host coin was a zinc cent and you have treated it.
For more information, see “The ‘zincer' dilemma” by Dee Drell in the January 2022 newsletter. There, he talks about clear coating freshly-rolled zinc cents and/or putting them in 2x2s and storing them in a dry place to keep them from corroding.
For more information on The Elongated Collectors, see:
The Elongated Collectors
(https://tecnews.org/)
Wayne Homren, Editor
The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization
promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org.
To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor
at this address: whomren@gmail.com
To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum
Copyright © 1998 - 2023 The Numismatic Bibliomania Society (NBS)
All Rights Reserved.
NBS Home Page
Contact the NBS webmaster
|