Lincoln Obscura (penny post #002/100?)

September 1, 2024 2:20 PM

Sandor Bodo is an artist who collects and then photographs heavily distressed U.S. pennies. You can find 16 of them on that project page, or scan through this video montage for a whole bunch more.

Excerpted from the artist statement image-block:

With macro photography, the work takes a close up look at found pennies in states of distress with surface features that impose, obscure and distort the portrait of Abraham Lincoln on the obverse side of the American one cent coin. Three different presentations have resulted from this work: a series of color photographic close ups of the pennies printed to 24 inches in diameter, hand printed books of the penny images, and a short video film depicting the penny images[...]

Small in size and in monetary value, the penny is easy to dismiss. One can look closely and see the wear of its service. The copper is a battlefield of scratches, gouges, and corrosion.

posted by nobody (12 comments total)

It's numismatist torture porn! Love it.
posted by rory at 2:23 PM on September 1 [1 favorite]

The new coins, it was suggested, could be almost 98 percent zinc, with a copper coating to ensure that they still looked like pennies. The zinc industry loved this idea. The Copper and Brass Fabricators Council sued the Department of Treasury — unsuccessfully — to prevent its implementation. The camps clashed over whether the proposed coins would, essentially, self-destruct. Copper is exceptionally resistant to corrosion. In theory, then, a zinc object that is entirely and perfectly encased within copper will corrode slowly. But pennies’ thin copper plating is easily scratched — and, for esoteric but indisputable metallurgical reasons, exposed zinc that is adjacent to copper can corrode rapidly. “From a corrosion perspective,” said Suveen Mathaudhu, a professor of metallurgical and materials engineering at the Colorado School of Mines, “it doesn’t make much sense.”

Online forums whose bailiwicks are the diverse manifestations of humans’ eternal pursuit of shiny items (metal detection, coin collection, etc.) are littered with images of modern pennies disintegrating from the inside out. Gathered from backyards and beaches, they are pitted, covered in chalky scabs or possessed of an element foreign to most circles: corners. Some have holes clean through them. Aficionados employ a derogatory term for the post-1982 pennies that often resemble artifacts dredged up from Aegean shipwrecks. They call them “zincolns.”

Source.
posted by AbelMelveny at 2:58 PM on September 1 [4 favorites]

2095
posted by clavdivs at 3:10 PM on September 1 [1 favorite]

I have a little bin of rotted zinc pennies. It feels wrong to just throw them in the trash (seems kind of toxic), but not sure what else to do with them. Throw them n the metal recycling? Maybe they'd take them at a bank, but I'd be embarrassed to ask them about it.
posted by DarkForest at 3:17 PM on September 1

If anyone has pennies to spare, Metafilter is holding a fundraiser.
posted by Ideefixe at 4:44 PM on September 1

My take from the previous post was that some people just really, really hate pennies.

Poor pennies
You are croutons. I will pet you.
posted by BlueHorse at 5:13 PM on September 1 [3 favorites]

This one looks like the Abe Lincoln you'd meet in Fallout 3, or maybe Adventure Time, if it were more realistic.
posted by mollweide at 7:40 PM on September 1 [1 favorite]

Back in the 60s I used my mother’s old enamelling kiln to melt glass onto copper for fun. The cheapest blanks were solid copper pennies, one side of which I’d sand smooth. Somewhere I have a batch of beautifully-enamelled pennies and I’d not given them a thought until I saw some of those images.
posted by kinnakeet at 10:57 PM on September 1 [2 favorites]

Drop 'em all in a dish of vinegar overnight, no worries.

I have a little bin of rotted zinc pennies. It feels wrong to just throw them in the trash (seems kind of toxic), but not sure what else to do with them. Throw them n the metal recycling? Maybe they'd take them at a bank, but I'd be embarrassed to ask them about it.

Put them in a handmade earthenware pot and bury them in the backyard, and future archaeologists will love you.
posted by rory at 12:29 AM on September 2 [1 favorite]

Dreadful pennies....
posted by chavenet at 3:41 AM on September 2 [1 favorite]

...and I had somehow missed the entire article I quoted so extensively above on the blue just a day ago. I'm as blind as ol' Abe on some of these pennies.
posted by AbelMelveny at 4:51 AM on September 2

I have a small handful of coins too encrusted to clean and I plan to bury them somewhere. I did try soaking them in hydrogen peroxide and in vinegar. At some point it isn't worth it spend the time for a few dollars. A relative passed last year and their executor had to deal with 20 plus jars of coins. I don't know the exact number, but I bought 5 of them and sorted and cleaned them and this is what is left.

I went through every coin to fill out my own collection and my nephew's. I even started two Candian Penny books, since I know those are no longer being made. I now have over $1k in US coins and I am lucky that my credit union has self-serve coin machines. I bring in about $85 at a time in mixed change in two small plastic buckets. I think I'll be done by the end of the year. I learned the hard way to fill them only about 3/4 full or the lids pop off when you turn a corner.
posted by soelo at 9:27 AM on September 3