i recently found a nickle while searching coin rolls. its a 1940 nickle but it has an s mint mark on the reverse on the right of the building. the only nickles i knew of that had mint marks on the reverse were silver war nickles. can anyone tell me any info bout this coin?
to the best of my recollection, the 1938-1943 jefferson nickels bore the mintmark to the right of the monticello.
The mint marks were on the reverse for the early jeffersons, like so: They are also on the reverse for the silver "war" nickels, but they are much larger and above the Monticello, like so: I cannot remember which year they switched to the front, but it was in the 70's I believe, like so:
to correct, the small mint mark to the right of the monticello appeared on 1938-1942 jefferson nickels, and the mintmark was enlarged and placed above the monticello on the wartime nickels from 1942-1945. the thinking was that, after the war nickels were no longer being produced, they would be easy to spot and remove from circulation with their large mint mark.
The small mint mark to the right of the monticello was also being used after the war nickels. I don't have my album handy, but I do know they were used into the 60's or 70's.
gbroke- correct. the mintmark reappeared on the reverse right side in 1946 and remained there until it moved to the obverse in 1968. also, the philadelphia coins had no mint mark during that timeframe.
To recap, all Jefferson nickels had mintmarks on reverse from 1938-1964. "War nickels" had them atop the dome, all others had them to the right of the building. In 1965-67 no mintmarks were on US coinage, and starting in 1968 the mintmarks were on the obverse bottom right.
More generally: Through 1964, the Jefferson nickel, Roosevelt dime, Washington quarter and Kennedy half had their mint mark on the reverse. From 1965 to 1967, no mint marks appeared. Starting in 1968, all mint marks appeared on the obverse.
I started to write that, too. But then I thought about the SLQs, and the first Walkers, and the Saint Gaudens, and I decided that was too many exceptions. (That, and I was worried that I still might be overlooking something...)
