You can find it at Home Depot. It’s used as a treatment for concrete prior to sealing or painting.
Perhaps a two-part magic nickel? you hide another smaller coin inside. look for ridge on the edge… :dubious:
my WAG
CITE!CITE!CITE!CITE!CITE!
gOogle :
CITE!
They switched to the zinc filled ones in the middle of 1982. Easiest way to tell which a particular 1982 penny is, is to drop it on a desk and listen to the ringing (copper :)) or lack thereof (zinc :().
Actually, it’s a really high-pitched ringing. If you can’t hear that high of a frequency, a zinc penny is noticeably lighter than a copper one.
I don’t think he will or should. I’m pretty sure what he meant, and as he said, it would rather spoil the secret.
However, if you’re really determined to glean some secret out of this thread, here’s one that’s already been spilled. (Alluded to by the OP and EffiePoo)
That pointed to a site with counterfeit dollars on it. Here is a guy who counterfeited 1944 Jefferson nickels. He figured no one would pay much attention to a nickel. Ironically, he got caught because his had no mint mark on them; for some reason the mint put out that year nickels with ‘P’ for Philadelphia instead of no mark at all like they usually did.
DD
:smack: Sorry, postcards. Next time I’ll read the text instead of just looking at the pictures. My site has pictures of the nickels in question, though.
DD
I’ve noticed another curiosity- if you look at other nickels, with the picture of Jefferson upright, and then flip it over, the image on the reverse of the coin is upside down; in fact it is so on all the coins (quarters, dimes, and pennies). The image on the reverse side of my nickel is on a bias, about 45 degrees. Does this clue anyone in???
You can also find it in your stomach; hydrochloric acid is part of your digestive system’s chemistry set (not that I’m suggesting this is useful in any way other than digestion).
Caymus28: Send me an email. I work just up the road from you, in Dayton. I’m good buddies with the physicist who runs our micro-analysis lab. He has a lab full of neat analytical instruments (scanning electron microscope (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), FTIR and UV-VIS spectroscopy, etc.), and I could easily talk him into checking it out. (Plus he owes me a favor!)
Don’t mind me… I just couldn’t figure out how to suscribe to this thread without posting…
Anyway, updates updates!
and um, do you really recommend x-ray diffraction analysis? If there really is a roll of microfilm in that coin wouldn’t the xrays damage it? I say cut it carefully open, call the FBI if he finds anything.
Nope. X-rays will only fog film before it’s been developed. Presumable any putative microfilm in the coin will have been developed first.
And also described thoroughly in a link provided by Mr. Moto in post #7 of this thread.
Read before posting, folks!
I was going to ask about the orientation of the faces, since your photos suggested that they weren’t lined up. Since you’ve confirmed that, you clearly have a prepared or faked coin of some kind. The question is, is it a magic trick coin, or an espionage device? Could it be anything else?
If it really is hollow and prepared to hold something inside, then cutting seems to me a bad idea, since presumably it was designed to be opened non-destructively.
Peter Morris seems to be implying that a magnet might open it. Have you tried that yet? (And BTW Peter, why all the secrecy?)
I’m not a scientist, but I don’t see how an SEM or spectroscope would help in figuring it out. Taking an X-ray of it might, but it’s not clear that Crafter_Man’s buddy has that capability.
And Harmonix, x-rays wouldn’t damage microfilm unless it hadn’t been developed yet, which is highly unlikely in this case. If that were the case, you’d have to open it in total darkness to preserve the image on the film, and that probably won’t happen, either.
I say play with it, look closely for seams or other irregularities, and try and figure how to open it without destroying it.
AND LET US KNOW WHAT YOU FIND OUT!!!
Following the last post in a thread, go further down and on the left is the ‘subscribe to this thread’ thingy. 
Speaking as a chemical engineer, I really must advise against fooling around with muriatic acid. The stuff that you buy to clean concrete is much more concentrated than the acid in your stomache. It can cause chemical burns if you get any on your skin, and if you get any in your eyes, it could cause vision damage or blind you. (I have a small scar on my arm, thanks to a little misadventure involving acid back in a college chemistry lab.)
It’s not there for me.
It is, however, available under the “thread tools” pulldown at the top of the thread.
What you likely have is a nickel made for a magic trick.
Putting your 5 cent peice in HCl wouldn’t solve anything. That’s for later pennies, and not nickels at all. SO DON’T DO THAT!!