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Glass Penny sold for $70,500.


Dave

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As a nerd for nuclear history (and a coin collector), this part was very cool to read:

 

"Official records indicate Treasury thought the glass coinage would be “too brittle,” but that was just a smokescreen. The real reason was as top secret as it gets. The planned production line glass pennies would have contained traces of uranium oxide that would make them fluoresce under ultraviolet light, a cool and ingenious anti-counterfeiting system. But another project that started in 1942 required every molecule of fissionable material that could be scrounged up, so the glass coins were scrapped and Blue Ridge had to send all of its uranium stock to Oak Ridge for use in the Manhattan Project."

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As a nerd for nuclear history (and a coin collector), this part was very cool to read:

 

"Official records indicate Treasury thought the glass coinage would be “too brittle,” but that was just a smokescreen. The real reason was as top secret as it gets. The planned production line glass pennies would have contained traces of uranium oxide that would make them fluoresce under ultraviolet light, a cool and ingenious anti-counterfeiting system. But another project that started in 1942 required every molecule of fissionable material that could be scrounged up, so the glass coins were scrapped and Blue Ridge had to send all of its uranium stock to Oak Ridge for use in the Manhattan Project."

 

 

Interesting that Durez Plastics and Chemical, Inc. (North Tonawanda, New York) was one of the companies trying alternative materials for cents.

They were located a few miles North of me. The location is now a empty , contaminated, field.

 

That is quite interesting Doc. Could have been world's different. If only?????

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Wow! I never even heard of such a thing -- very, very cool!

 

I don't know about glass per se, but I can imagine there might be a sufficiently tough ceramic out there that could stand up to pocket punishment if they wanted to try that again.

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