Penny Earrings

These earrings started life as pre-1982 pennies. Pennies made before 1982 are 95% copper and 5% zinc, basically a high-copper brass, and solid all the way through. 1982 and later pennies are zinc with copper plating. I hate plating, it feels like lying to me. Electroplating is often only a few ATOMS thick, just enough to change the color. That said, I think the coating on pennies is thicker than that, but still...

This means that older pennies are actually worth about two and a half cents, just from the weight of the copper :-) But more importantly for me, it means that they can be hammered into interesting shapes!

 -Mark