In my accumulations I had one of those hang ups with old silver for historical display. There was a 1945 Half, Quarter and Dime. The display was falling apart so I took the coins out. I think the coins were fakes for making displays. You can see what looks like bronze under a silver plating. The dime even has what appears to be porosity. This is in the last photo just above the eye. Some photos are attached.
The things people will do... Wouldn't it be easier to just obtain real coins with these dates and place them in the display?
I'm not sure they're fake. Coins put into those displays are often polished to death first, and it looks like that happened to these. The discoloration could just be re-tarnishing. If you have access to an accurate jewelry-type scale, it would be interesting to see what they weigh.
Those weights check out, given the wear on the coins. If they were silver-plated brass or copper, they'd be a good bit lighter, or else thicker. It's possible to make fakes that weigh correctly (by making them thicker), but it's uncommon to make such fakes look that worn. If this set was put together a long time ago, it just wouldn't have been worthwhile to make fakes for it. The coins themselves were cheap, especially at that stage of wear. As for the porosity you're seeing on the dime - I don't think I'm really seeing it in these photos, but the coin could've been corroded prior to the polishing. This is a great time to sell off silver coins that are impaired and don't have sentimental value, by the way!
I agree that they were probably just polished/buffed/whizzed to death to make them shiny for the display. They're common well-circulated coins so why bother faking them? Melt value probably wasn't very much when it was made.
a local store in central NY called "Loblaws" sold coins of yesteryear like these back in the 70's for sets to assemble. They sold walking halves, mercury dimes, silver quarters and war nickels plus steel pennies. They polished the heck out of them just like these. they sure were super shinny. I still have them around someplace Found an ad for these coins - gimmick to get customers in the store --- bottom left corner
Two pounds of carrots for 28 cents caught my eye. I remember going through some paperbacks I got during high school (late 70s) and finding coupons I'd used as bookmarks. There were a couple of coupons for 12 cents off a product. Ah, the days when the difference between 10 and 12 cents was significant, and it was worth the time and the risk of paper cuts to clip a 12-cent coupon...
You'd think, but it's been known to happen. There was someone that famously made a bunch of fake nickels after all. Those weren't numismatic fakes though; they were meant to be spent. Some numismatically valuable pennies have been faked or altered too. I don't think these coins in question though are likely "fake"; I think they've just been polished rather harshly.
