1867 Penny

[Rob]

Thoughts please chaps. 

Is not a cast as it rings clearly.

The legend looks to be the correct size and font.

The diameter of the design is correct for a penny

Is made of copper or bronze.

Weighs 9.38g and the flan is about 1.5mm thick, but obviously suffers from a little corrosion.

The irregularity of the edge and diameter would tend to eliminate it being struck out of collar because the blank would be round when punched out from the rolled sheet.

The die axis is correct

Edited March 11, 2022 by Rob

[Rob]

and the reverse

[Coinery]

Someone practicing with homemade dies for forgery, possibly?

[1949threepence]

Not sure - the first I of VICTORIA looks out of alignment.

[terrysoldpennies]

It looks to me as though it could have been crushed around the edge, but leaving the center largely unaffected , and then undergoing a long period of corrosion. !! 

[Rob]

17 minutes ago, terrysoldpennies said:

It looks to me as though it could have been crushed around the edge, but leaving the center largely unaffected , and then undergoing a long period of corrosion. !! 

I'm not convinced about that as there is too much excess metal beyond the teeth to account for just the rim.

[VickySilver]

PMD seems rather the case at least to me. What was the impacter? Not sure but looks basically to have been hammered, almost like a ball-peen (sp?).

[terrysoldpennies]

5 hours ago, Rob said:

I'm not convinced about that as there is too much excess metal beyond the teeth to account for just the rim.

What makes me think its been crushed is that the BRITT part of the legend is much wider spread than it should be.   I would think that someone has used the coin , being made of bronze and rather soft, as some kind of cushion  between two pieces of pipe while being hammered, possible made of cast iron which is rather brittle .

[copper123]

Somebody must have been really hard-up few forgeries of later victorian bronze are known.

[Coinery]

5 hours ago, copper123 said:

Somebody must have been really hard-up few forgeries of later victorian bronze are known.

I guess with a Victorian penny being worth around 50p today, it would make it worthwhile!

I guess the better forgers would be concentrating on the silver or gold, leaving the lowly coppers to those whose life was transformed simply by their affording to buy bread? 

I don’t buy the mangled ‘genuine’ penny theory. I’m inclined to think that someone made up some cast dies and had a play. 

Just out of interest, and I couldn’t find any when searching the images, does that misaligned ‘I’ in Victoria exist as a variety?
 

 

[VickySilver]

I mean those are multiple incuse impact marks, nearly too many to count and so IMO very unlikely to be other than post minting damage as alluded to.