42 S war nickel struck on nickel?

In my unbiased opinion there are two possibilities. Option One - You have an original off-metal strike. You can get a ball park estimate of the generic value from the listings in back of the Red Book. Look in the index for error coins. They provide a chart with values. What you describe if real would be an "off-metal strike". Every time I recommend CONECA for error attribution other people argue with me,. To my mind the error specialists would have a better grasp on what you have. You do what you please. There were people making counterfeit nickels for money use in the period 1939 to 1946. The most prolific of those was a man named HENNING. 1942-S is not a known HENNING BUT if it is determined that this is a previously unknown HENNING you have something. The nice thing about him is that all of his productions had one feature in common. Read up on them and look for that feature on your nickel. Hope this helps you. Good luck.

 

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The Henning's were off weight (5.3 or 5.4 g) and he never used an S.
There are no mushy details, this has nothing to do with Henning.
How is a guy from New Jersey going to dump a load of counterfeit S nickels on an east coast bank teller?

 

He spent his production in the east and when the cops got close he dumped what he still had in two locations. I've also heard that unless he stole the raw metals he was losing money on each nickel that he made.

 

Check jewelers, pawn shops, and larger "We Buy Gold" places to find one that has an XRF gun and you can probably get it tested for 5 or 10 bucks. There are at least two people on ebay offering XRF testing for $20. If you can do a good job conducting a specific gravity test, that would be a good first step, cuppernickel has a SG of 8.92 a warnickel alloy is 9.25 - 9.32

 

Get an xrf test locally. The color does not look consistent with a silver war nick. A shop that buys palladium or large quantities of gold should have a gun.

If that test comes back as copper nickel, then you would want to submit to NCG or PCGS for slabbing. They may say they coin is a counterfeit or say it is a previously unknown off metal.

Good luck and hopefully you have found something special.

Matt