Realcent.org

I am surprised no one affiliated with realcent found it.

https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/maker-learns-the-fate-of-a-penny-made-of-gold/

This thing was made in Seattle, not all that far from Portland. Can you imagine if Adam Youngs discovered this one? If I was Adam and discovered it, I'd have a whole separate link on my website talking about it and would have had that thing framed.

From the above article:

"He never expected to see it again, but he wondered where the penny ended up: stuck in a giant penny jar, melted down with other coins back at the United States Mint, lost in a street gutter."

I was completely unaware the US Mint was melting it's own pennies. That would explain the rapid drop of copper percentages and the surge in new zincs a few years ago. How long has this been going on?

An 8 year old article and I don't recall hearing about it until now (or maybe I blocked it out). Had others heard of this before?

68Camaro wrote:An 8 year old article and I don't recall hearing about it until now (or maybe I blocked it out). Had others heard of this before?

Never heard of it before. Judging by the looks of it I probably wouldn't taken a second look at it and just thrown it in with the coppers.

Cool story- pretty sure this was posted here at some point years ago

$11.90 for a Hustler magazine? What?????

Fun story, thank you for sharing, and no the mint isn't melting pennies down, they don't want to stop the penny here just yet, they float the idea. Many theories as to why they won't. Computer program rewrites, people can't round (yes they can), take penny, leave a penny? We are waiting. Patiently, for the big melt. Until then, we still find around 10 or so wheats in each $25 box here in the midwest. Who knows, maybe one of these golds is sitting around in my mix of weird ones that I keep for looking at later, but I doubt it.

Gold pennies...no big deal...I have a red solo cup half full of gold pennies I have found over the years....now the silver ones is a different story...I only have found a few of those.