Found a strange coin-Any info?

[towhead]

A one sided hollow wheat penny. Anybody know anything about coins? Thanks! -Julie

 

[towhead]

Empty hollow side....

 

[beendiggin]

How big is it, same size as a real penny ? Maybe a mold for chocolate coins? Interesting, whatever it is.

 

[towhead]

Exact same size as a penny....

Thanks for your thoughts beendiggin!

-Julie

 

[markh]

Hi Julie,

It looks like the face side has been removed with a lathe. Maybe someone used it to practice their lathe skills on a small object?
I know that there are forgeries of Morgan silver dollars that are made by splitting two common coins, then joining them to get rare mintmark/ date combinations, but I haven't heard of this being done for Lincoln wheat cents. Probably wouldn't make sense to do this to wheat cents, as the mint mark and date are both on the front side. Unless they took the back of a 1909vdb and tried to put it on a 1909-s front to make a 1909s-vdb which can sell for a few thousand in mint state condition.

here's some info on spilt fake Morgans:

http://www.coinnews.net/2009/10/27/pcgs-helps-police-nab-counterfeits-suspect/


Just some thoughts.

Mark

 

[towhead]

Interesting thought markh.... would a lathe cut that perfect? ....and leave it "clean" and hollow....like a cap?

Thanks-Julie

 

[BRIAN S.]

Is that some type of glue or epoxy residue in the hollow side ?

 

[BRIAN S.]

A cufflink maybe ?

 

[markh]

Oh yes, a good conventional lathe is accurate down a few ten thousands of an inch (or 3-4 microns, human hair diameter ~60 microns). The more modern CNC lathes are accurate to <1 micron. It looks like the thickness of the rim on your coin is a few hundredth's of an inch, so this would be easy to do on a good lathe.
Mark

 

[GuntherHess]

I have seen this done to make novelty "squirting coins" and other items.