Silver 1971?

[Sfynks870]

Found this odity today. 1971 jfk half with no mint that looks silver. The last picture shows its edge with a clad on each side to illustrate the difference.

 

[BuffaloBoy]

Your half dollar is painted/plated silver. Not a keeper, sorry.

 

[ArkieBassMan]

Plated halves are unfortunately more common than the 1970 halves you asked about earlier.

 

[Avago]

Wishful thinking... sound check, weigh it, never know!

Looks plated to me also though. I second Arkie.

 

[Liu21]

Drop the coin on a hard surface like inside your garage or if you have granite countertops. If it is silver you will know for sure. If you don't drop a clad then drop a 40%er, should not be too hard to tell.

 

[Sfynks870]

Yeah, I was pretty sure it's not actually silver, just thought it was strange. However, I will be weighing it soon to make sure. I assume the plating was done privately? I'm perplexed as to why someone would do that?

 

[Sfynks870]

Well, I weighed it. It's clad. So, I figured there was no harm in taking a scotch Brite pad to it to see if it's paint. Nope, must be plated. Again I ask, why would someone do that?

 

[galenrog]

Did you ever take a chemistry class in school? Or a metal shop class?

When I took those classes 40+ years ago, we did learn basics of both chemical plating and electroplating. I can still turn a coin to gold with a little zinc and common household chemicals. Can make the same coin look silver, too. We had a lot of fun doing it back then. I would guess that some schools still teach these fundamentals, but I could be wrong.

As far as how many plated Kennedys are out there, I have to agree with Arkie. Probably more than the entire 1970 mintage. I find a lot of gold plated Kennedys out there too, but I do not get excited about those. It costs nearly as much in time and trouble to deplate them as the gold is worth.

 

[fistfulladirt]

I found one also. It did not pass the single-ply tissue test, on which I have a patent