Theories as to what's happened with this penny?

[RChris]

Another acid bath victim perhaps? Any other theories? It weighs 9.1g

[Rob]

The visible lettering is too crude and close to the rim IMO. It looks more like an abused attempt at a cast copy to me. Any attempts at acid cleaning will thin the letters and reduce dimensions on all 3 axes if there is total immersion. The weight of a cast would obviously depend on the amount of metal poured into the mould, so I think not relevant in this instance.

[Coinery]

Definitely…wot Rob said!

[oldcopper]

45 minutes ago, Coinery said:

Definitely…wot Rob said!

I would say it looks like acid immersion - porous surface, and the designs plus fields will erode downwards as they originally rise up from the coin.

[Rob]

It is the rim metal covering the legend that gave me the response above. It may well have been both processes to clean off any surface marks from cooked material in the mould (if cast), with force applied (?) to produce the inner ring. I'm struggling to reconcile the ring lip with a linear circle, as it would have to impinge on the legend too as seen.

Only the person responsible for it knows the truth.

[Coinery]

5 minutes ago, oldcopper said:

I would say it looks like acid immersion - porous surface, and the designs plus fields will erode downwards as they originally rise up from the coin.

I really don’t see the date, for example, holding such a clear, crude form after submersion, myself…and especially for all the other devices to be so poorly positioned, if it were really the genuine article!

[copper123]

Must have been really hard up to forge a Ell penny 

[Coinery]

1 hour ago, copper123 said:

Must have been really hard up to forge a Ell penny 

That’s a VERY valid point…

[oldcopper]

4 hours ago, Coinery said:

I really don’t see the date, for example, holding such a clear, crude form after submersion, myself…and especially for all the other devices to be so poorly positioned, if it were really the genuine article!

I see your point. The designs of modern coinage, including pre-decimal QE2 as here, are low relief to prolong the die life, almost 2-D with negligible depth, and thus it might not need much acid dunking to erode any shallow raised detail, if it were treated so. As the adjacent field would also be dissolving that may produce the expanded effect as shown, almost like a ghost image, but that's just thinking of a theory and probably doesn't make sense. The marks aren't acid marks either, they're loads of small cuts, perhaps kept in a tin with other coins for many years.

 

[Peckris 2]

Having owned  couple of acid bathed coins I agree with Rob. Acid doesn't shear off the main design leaving the original thickness - it attacks on all axies, leaving a much thinner coin with the elements of all the original design still clear enough to see, including the legend.

[Sword]

I have put pennies into acid baths on numerous occasions (for serious purposes at work and not fooling about.) The edge would invariably thin out first. Even for the sake of argument that someone were to use a wax to protect the edge, an acid would still "smooth out" the surface marks. I can't see how the design has nearly disappeared with so many surface marks left. Then there is the flattened date. Acid won't do that.

[HistoricCoinage]

Seems some folk go even further to get to the bottom of coin mysteries: https://phys.org/news/2026-09-materials-analysis-minting-mystery-british.html

[Chris Perkins]

1 hour ago, HistoricCoinage said:

Seems some folk go even further to get to the bottom of coin mysteries: https://phys.org/news/2026-09-materials-analysis-minting-mystery-british.html

I remember being shown that coin. I told the person who sent the email pics that it was a mangled sixpence:

"It looks like damage to me. Who knows what caused it and how much circulation it went through after the damage. Some damage can be hard to fathom. Maybe someone was trying to cover the SIX PENCE in order to pass it off as something else. It's possible I suppose that it did suffer some kind of defect when made and then someone made it worse, but either way, it's a bit of a mess.

I really can't imagine anyone would be willing to pay more than the silver value for it. "

Also here:
https://britnumsoc.blog/2025/11/11/an-1834-william-iv-sixpence-with-a-laboratory-confirmed-multi-strike-error-from-the-steam-press-era-a-ikraam/https://britnumsoc.blog/2025/11/11/an-1834-william-iv-sixpence-with-a-laboratory-confirmed-multi-strike-error-from-the-steam-press-era-a-ikraam/

Erm, ok.

[jelida]

It’s almost unbelievable that the BNS allowed unchallenged publication of this blog which I feel  is a mass of A.I. pseudoscience and unproven ‘evidence’ from which unjustifiable conclusions are presented as fact! Will they publish my learned study demonstrating that pixies have set up a mint at the bottom of my garden? A.I. has found lots of photographic evidence, and Donald Trump says it’s the ‘greatest numismatic discovery ever’ apart from when he found his face on a gold dollar! (Obviously Trump didn’t actually use the word ‘numismatic’, I think that was posted by Harp).

Jerry