1946 Silver Nickel?

As someone who has roll searched out something like 400 war nickels, I can hear the difference all day long. You have to be very in-tune to what silver sounds like, and war nickels are the toughest to distinguish, but the different alloy produces a unique sound. Slightly higher pitched and shorter lasting.

 

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Listen closer.

 

I can agree with this. I have flicked a war nickel and a regular one many times in comparison and there is a distinct difference in sound.

 

They did...a whole bunch even (13,740,000)...and on purpose.

http://www.coinfacts.com/small_cents/indian_head_cents/1864_cent_copper_nickel.htm

 

SG of the coppernickel alloy of 8.92 and the Warnickel alloy at 9.25 should be great enough to tell apart. The 8.42 that he got tells me he needs to work on his technique, or if he is using a scale accurate to only .1 grams then he needs a scale with a greater precision. The 8.42 is too far off even for a coppernickel coin.

 

digital scales give a false sense of accuracy.

 

Generally mass (or weight) is easy to measure with great accuracy. Just go to any college or university nearby (or even some high schools) and they will have balances that will weigh to the nearest ten-thousandith of a gram (X.XXXX g). The trick is to get the volume since (density = mass/volume) we are limited by the accuracy of the volume measurement, which is not usually very good. The specific gravity is not the same as density, but really, really close. the specific gravity of an object is the mass of the object divided by the mass of an equal volume of water at that temperature. If we take the density of water as 1 (or 1.0 or 1.00, etc.) they are the same. There is a way to do it by measuring the mass of the object suspended in water, but you have to have an accurate hanging balance to do that.

 

I think what areich means is that a lot of people think that since the scale is digital it has to be right, or what ever results they get must be correct. Ain't always so.

 

I don't think it is a 1946 nickel of wartime composition. It just looks like it has some discoloring due to remaining undisturbed in an environment for an period of time or maybe some extreme heat caused it. I wouldn't waste much time on it but I would keep it for my collection.

 

If ya really wanna be shure without damaging the coin, go to a pawn shop and ask if they will " shoot it" with one of those $20,000 detecting guns

 

Looks like fire damage to me.

 

According to a printout from the Mint (revised 6-1-76) "1942-45" nickels [wartime issue]:

5.0 grams +/- .194 35% Ag, 56% Cu, 9% Mn Specific Gravity: 9.32

 

my refernce said 9.25 but it did have an *. Seems that is "unofficial data". yours seems to be "official" so I'll update my reference. Thanks.

 

Just between you and me Don't tell anyone I said this but it's hard for most of us to get an accurate SpGr any more w/o spending $$$$. One place I worked had a Mettler balance on a granite table accurate to thousandths (.0000). Still had trouble w/Calf. Fractional gold.

 

Just between you and me, this thread is 4 years old and resurrected with a quote only.
I miss doug's Mary Ann avatar though.

 

Sucked in again...

 

Sure, nickel is magnetic, and an old Canadian nickel will stick very nicely to even a relatively weak magnet. Cupronickel, though -- the 75% copper, 25% nickel alloy used in US nickels -- never will. According to this abstract, you need at least 56% copper to start seeing ferromagnetism "at ordinary temperatures".

To be fair, I overstated my case (long ago) when I said "the only way" was chemical tests or XRF. I'm sure the alloys differ in lots of ways -- permittivity (how they react electrically in a magnetic field), conductivity (although to test this you need to dig under the surface layer), stiffness (which would affect their "ring"), and so on. Only scientists and engineers are likely to have the tools and knowledge to take advantage of those, though.

Actually, that's not entirely true. We all have access to tools that do a fairly sophisticated and very quick analysis of size, weight, and magnetic properties. They're known as "vending machines", "CoinStar", and the like. They reject silver pretty reliably; they reject steel and pure nickel coins 100% of the time. Would they reject a silver-composition nickel? Maybe. I'm not sure I'm willing to spend many war nickels experimenting, though.