Penny – Shanghai Metal Corporation

Creative applications of coins

Many people get annoyed when their wallets are full of coins. All those clinking sounds in a pocket while you are walking… But have you ever thought of using these coins for something else than paying for chewing gums or helping homeless people?

Several artists have seen the possibility in spare change we carry around and showed that coins don’t have just financial worth.

New York City’s design firm Sagmeister & Walsh created this masterpiece over the eight-day period, covering are of 3,200 square feet and over 100 volunteers helped them to sort the coins by color tone and place them in space in Amsterdam, Netherlands. It was made up of 250,000 Euro one-cent pieces.

The piece above is created from steel, brass and one-cent coins. Stars and stripes were cut to make an accurate although not a colorful rendition of the U.S. flag. It was created by Stacey Lee Webber.

This portrait of Nelson Mandela, the former South African president, that measures 44 by 31 inches was created out of 5,340 pennies. The British artist Ed Chapman also created mosaic works of pop-cultural icons including Albert Einstein, John Lennon and Marilyn Monroe.

Johnny Swing’s amazing settee made out of 7,000 nickels and 35, 000 welds.

Coin playing cards created by Ted Stanke.

Amazing penny dress created by Raymond Waters in 2010.

And at the end of our article this cute coin panda. Just a bamboo stick is missing!

Shanghai Metal Corporation offers customer steel, copper, other metals and products. For more information visit our main website or send us inquiry. English speaking staff will guide you further. Download our application by scanning QR code below or follow us on Social Media.

Silvia M.//SMC Editor

Read more articles written by this author here.

Credits: sackmagazine.com, accountingschoolguide.com, inspirationgreen.com, googleimages.com

Do You Know How The UK Coins Are Made And What Are They Made of?

The processes involved in producing a coin can be broken down into three different sections: making the blanks, making the dies and striking the coins.

Making the blanks

Depending on the alloy required, the appropriate metals are melted in the necessary proportions in a furnace. The metal is then extracted from the furnace in the form of a continuous strip, which is cut to produce coils weighing up to 2.8 tonnes. The strip is passed through powerful rolling mills to reduce it to the thickness of a coin. Blank discs of metal are then punched from the strip in a blanking press at a rate of up to 10,000 a minute. Rolling metal under great pressure makes it hard so the blanks have to be softened, something which is achieved by heating them in an annealing furnace at up to 950°C.

Making the dies

Once a design has been approved, a plaster model is prepared at several times the diameter of the intended coin. The plaster model is scanned by a ruby-tipped probe which records the design as a digital file on a computer. Guided by this digital file, an engraving machine cuts the design into a piece of steel at the correct size of the coin. Known as a reduction punch, this piece of steel is then used to make the dies which will actually strike the coins.

Striking the coins

For the final stage of the process, the blanks are fed into a coining press containing a pair of dies. Applying a pressure of around 60 tonnes, the dies strike the blanks and turn them into coins at speeds of up to 850 a minute.

= 1 penny coin =

First Issued February 15, 1971

Diameter 20.3mm

Weight 3.56g

Thickness Bronze: 1.52mm. Copper-plated steel: 1.65mm

Composition Bronze (97pc copper, 2.5pc zinc, 0.5pc tin)

= 2 pence coin =

First Issued February 15, 1971

Diameter 25.9mm

Weight 7.12g

Thickness Bronze: 1.85mm. Copper-plated steel: 2.03mm

Composition Bronze (97pc copper, 2.5pc zinc, 0.5pc tin)

= 5 pence coin =

First Issued Smaller version in June 1990.

Diameter 18.0mm

Weight 3.25g

Thickness 1.7mm

Composition Cupro-nickel (75pc copper, 25pc nickel)

= 10 pence coin =

First Issued Smaller version in September 1992.

Diameter (since 1992) 24.5mm

Weight 6.5g

Thickness 1.85mm

Composition Cupro-nickel (75pc copper, 25pc nickel)

= 20 pence coin =

First Issued June 9, 1982

Diameter 21.4mm

Weight 5g

Thickness 1.7mm

Composition Cupro-nickel (84pc copper, 16c nickel)

= 50 pence coin =

First Issued Smaller version introduced in September 1997. Diameter (since 1997) 27.3mm

Weight 8.0g

Thickness 1.78mm

Composition Cupro-nickel (75pc copper, 25pc nickel)

= 1 pound coin =

Issue Date April 21, 1983

Diameter 22.5mm

Weight 9.5g

Thickness 3.15mm

Composition Nickel-Brass (70pc copper, 5.5pc nickel, 24.5pc zinc)

= 2 pound coin =

First Issued June 15, 1998

Diameter 28.4mm

Weight 12g

Thickness 2.5mm

Composition, Outer Nickel-Brass (76pc copper, 4pc nickel, 20pc zinc). Inner Cupro-nickel (75pc copper, 25pc nickel)

= 5 pound coin =

First Issued August 4, 1990. Previously crowns had a face value of 25p

Diameter 38.61mm

Weight 28.28g

Thickness 2.89mm

Composition Cupro-nickel (75pc copper, 25pc nickel)

Collector versions have been struck in precious metals

As an international manufacturer and supplier for copper sheet and bronze sheet, Shanghai Metal Corporation produces slitting, edging, and oscillates winding to fit your specific copper requirements. To find out more, please visit our Website or send your inquiry here. Our English speaking personnel will be more than pleased to help you. Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel. Or you could try our new mobile app by scanning our QR code.

Sources: Royal Mint, The Telegraph, museumvictoria.com.au

William P.//SMC Editor

Do You Know Whether Your Penny Is a Copper or a Zinc Coin?

The United States one-cent coin is officially named cent, but commonly known as a penny. The colloquial term penny derives from the British coin of the same name. Since 1909 the reverse has honored President Abraham Lincoln in varying designs, and one century later a new, permanent reverse – the Union Shield – was introduced in 2010. The coin is 0.75 inches (19.05 mm) in diameter and 0.0598 inches (1.52 mm) in thickness.

If your coin has a date before 1982, it is made of 95% copper. If dated 1983 or later, it is made of 97.5% zinc and plated with a thin 2.5% copper coating. At one point, from 1793 to 1837, the penny coin was pure copper. After that, the cent was made of bronze (95% copper, and 5% tin and zinc), but then 88% copper and 12% nickel, giving the coin a whitish appearance, and back again to bronze until its current composition of copper-plated zinc.

The fluctuation of copper in the coin composition was due to a number of reasons. The war effort in 1943 increased the demand for copper. However, a limited number of copper pennies were still minted that year. Other times, the price of copper rose to a point where the cent contained almost one cent’s worth of copper. This led the Mint to test alternative metals, including aluminum and bronze-clad steel. Aluminum was chosen, and over 1.5 million of these pennies were struck and ready for public release before ultimately being rejected. The proposed aluminum pennies were rejected for two reasons: vending machine owners complained the coins would cause mechanical problems; and pediatricians and pediatric radiologists pointed out that the radiodensity of the metal inside the respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts was close to that of soft tissue, and the coins would therefore be difficult to detect in X-ray imaging. One aluminum cent was donated to the Smithsonian Institution.

As of 2013, based onthe US Mint Annual Report released in 2014, it costs the U.S. Mint 1.83 cents (down from 2.41 cents in 2011) to make one cent because of the cost of materials, production, and distribution. This figure includes the Mint’s fixed components for distribution and fabrication, as well as Mint overhead allocated to the penny. Fixed costs and overhead would have to be absorbed by other circulating coins without the penny. The loss in profitability due to producing the one cent coin in the United States for the year of 2013 was $55,000,000. This was a slight decrease from 2012, the year before, which had a production loss of $58,000,000.

If you wonder whether your penny is made of copper or zinc, the safest and best way to tell their composition is to weigh them. Copper pennies weigh 3.11 grams, whereas the zinc pennies weigh only 2.5 grams. However, an alternative and easiest way is the “drop” test. When you drop the coin on the table, zinc pennies have sort of a flat “clunk”, whereas copper pennies have a higher-pitched, more melodious “ring” sound. Obviously, this test isn’t as reliable as weighing them, but it should help you sort most of copper and zinc pennies.

Do the test and let us know!

Shanghai Metal Corporation offers copper is varying types including foil, cable, tube, coil, busbar, sheet, plate, in varying fittings and sizes. SMC also produces enameled wires, PTFE wires, low voltage cables, fiberglass copper wires for the security, telecommunications, electrical, commercial, industrial, and automotive industries. To find out more, please visit our Website or send your inquiry here. Our English speaking personnel will be more than pleased to help you. Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel. Or you could try our new mobile app by scanning our QR code.

Source: usmint.gov, coins.about.com, parkpennies.com, Wikipedia, sarahsuesphotography.blogspot.com, flickr.com

Camilla G.//SMC Editor