Hello, This week an individual gave me a 1995 D zinc penny and asked me for some information about it. He thought, at first, that it was a silver penny and was amazed because he'd never seen one before.

A while back I got a question about silver pennies but I think the ones back then were from earlier years.

Anyhow, here is what I found out about this. I got this from Answers.com and I think it's pretty accurate.

The question was, what is the value of this coin:

Answer: There are two possibilities with a '1995D silver penny': 1. Someone has altered the coin after it was minted and if so, it is worth a penny. 2. It could be a miss struck/error coin (a coin struck on a planchet intended for a coin of another denomination or of the wrong metal) if this is the case then it could be worth as much as $250.00 according to condition.

In Reality

Most likely you have one of the relatively common unfinished planchet errors. This happens when part of the long strip that blanks are cut out of does not get completely covered with its thin outer layer of copper. This can happen on one side or both. These generally sell for $5 or less.

It may look like silver or been plated with silver but the US has never made any silver 1 cent coins.

I found a side by side picture of a regular 1995 penny and this “silver” one. I couldn't use it here in this column though to show you because, when we put the picture to the black and white, you couldn't see any difference! So, if you want to see what these look like side by side, you could go to Goggle and type in “1995 Silver Penny” under images and it should be the first one you see. There are two pennies on a black background.

I just realized that this is my last column of the year so, thanks to everyone for reading and thanks to Larry's Coins for putting his ad on my page too.

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy 2011 and, get some coin questions ready for me in the new year!