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1946 silver nickel?
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7 posts in this topic

By the date. If it's 1946, it's not silver.

Color does help to confirm it. The silver war nickels, which also had some Mn, tend to tone more toward flat black with wear. The shine is replaced with a sooty gray that readily progresses toward coal black. Your 1946 is definitely not characteristic of the war nickels, which tend to stand out due to the difference in toning tendency.

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An easy way to distinguish the silver nickels from the copper/nickel ones is to look for the large mint mark over the top of Monticello. If there is no mint mark, or a mint mark to the right of the building, the coin is copper/nickel. 

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Specific gravity or test it with a XRF gun..  Color is not definitive, weight is the same for both types, ring test is not definitive either in my opinion.

Bob, if you have a error 1946 nickel on a silver war nickel planchet, does it magically grow a large mintmark on the back?

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Are there any known Silver War Nickel planchets struck in 1946?   I have never heard of any, the chances of finding one in the wild are infinitesimally small in any event.

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13 hours ago, Conder101 said:

 

Bob, if you have a error 1946 nickel on a silver war nickel planchet, does it magically grow a large mintmark on the back?

Yes, as a matter of fact, it does. :nyah:

 

To be honest, I never even considered wrong planchet error. :blush:

 Is there enough silver in there for the tissue test to work? Nearly every circulated example that I have seen has been very dark.

Edited by Just Bob
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On 9/15/2019 at 1:27 AM, Conder101 said:

Specific gravity or test it with a XRF gun..  Color is not definitive, weight is the same for both types, ring test is not definitive either in my opinion.

Bob, if you have a error 1946 nickel on a silver war nickel planchet, does it magically grow a large mintmark on the back?

The specific gravity of a regular copper-nickel coin will be approx. 8.92. The s.g. of a wartime alloy coin will be approx. 9.32. Properly done, s.g. is accurate to roughly 0.1, so that should work.

Personally, I do not think that the color indicates wartime alloy.

TD

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