playdan1
Jr. Member
How do you tell the difference between copper and zinc pennies? With a magnet? I tried that, but it doesn't work so well. Any ideas?
mick56 said:I made a balance beam.
Bingo, I use my detector. I will save a bunch of 82's and turn on my machine. High tones go in one jar and low tones in another. Very accurate.mts said:Don't forget to also try using your metal detector to tell the difference. Some metal detectors have good enough discrimination to where they can tell the difference between a zinc and copper cent. Mine gives a low tone for zinc and a high tone for copper when the discrimination is turned all the way up. It sure beats weighing them or date checking. Just pass them across the coil and you have your answer.
Just for completeness, I'll throw out another alternative method (that I never use). If you bounce them off of a hard surface the copper ones have a nice ring while the zinc ones sound almost like plastic.
wayne1956 said:Bingo, I use my detector. I will save a bunch of 82's and turn on my machine. High tones go in one jar and low tones in another. Very accurate.mts said:Don't forget to also try using your metal detector to tell the difference. Some metal detectors have good enough discrimination to where they can tell the difference between a zinc and copper cent. Mine gives a low tone for zinc and a high tone for copper when the discrimination is turned all the way up. It sure beats weighing them or date checking. Just pass them across the coil and you have your answer.
Just for completeness, I'll throw out another alternative method (that I never use). If you bounce them off of a hard surface the copper ones have a nice ring while the zinc ones sound almost like plastic.