My cousin and I were reminiscing about old times earlier today. Well,he brings up this one time that his family came down to visit my family when we were kids,we hardly ever saw each other because we lived about 400 miles apart.
I am about 7 years older than him and was usually the instigator of our youth-fueled shennanigans. Ok. A few weeks back my Dad brought over this little Bandito welder set(you know,the small ones that have the 2 foot tall tanks),I don'tknow what the real name of the set is. So we broke it out and started melting stuff like tin and aluminum cans,my sister's Barbie dolls,whatever.
So then I reach into my pocket and grab a penny to melt and lay it on the sidewalk. We start ooohhg and aaahhing as it starts to turn all these puuurty colors and all of a sudden:POW! the thing blows up!
Luckily my cousin was wearing glasses! you could see little pieces of copper(?) embedded in the lenses(these were really,really tiny pieces and they just blew off with a firm breath). That was about it,other than the slight stinging we got on our faces from the molten metal.
All these years I thought it blew because we got the concrete hot. Could it have been because the penny was not pure copper? The reason I ask is because I've always kept a huge coin jar,but only put in the "silver"coins in it(nickels,dimes quarters). Now I want to collect only all-copper pennies also.
So what year did they stop making all-copper pennies?
Thanks,
Ray IV