I have this shilling and by its patina and luster I would swear it was accidentally struck on a silver planchet. It is from 1947 which is the year directly after they switched to Copper-Nickel, I weighed it and it weighs 5.66 grams and my scale could be off the .01 grams. I can not find the proper weight for the copper-nickel shilling for that year, but the silver weights are listed at 5.6552 grams and I am almost spot on the weight. Is it possible this shilling is .500 Silver? I will also attach a link to a short video of this coin... sorry the quality of the video is very amateur. Silver Shilling?
Let's put it this way, there are no silver examples known. So the chances of yours being silver - slim to none.
nothing is impossible.:kewl: but the odds of being silver are like winning a 100 million dollar lottery twice!!!!
Sorry but I'd go with not silver. As goossen pointed out your coin does fall in the weight range for that type for Cu/Ni. I sometimes find it difficult to distinguish between silver/non-silver coins around that period by the look of them alone.
While the version shown is typical of a cupronickel coin, Coincraft does record that a 50% silver version of this coin does exist, but only lists it at £750 in Uncirculated, implying that few if any got into circulation in the normal way. I have requested Coincraft to provide more information.
if it was silver you could name your own price for the coin..................................but alas, it is cupro-nickel and worth around 75 pence.
Another point. Weighing UK coins do not help as their weight does not change when the metal changes. UK banks check bags of coin by weighing them. The only exception is with the two pound coin, which became much thinner when they switched from nickel brass to bimetallic in 1997. Deliberate weight reduction when the 5p, 10p and 50p were made smaller is a different matter. A pile of 10 copper clad steel 2p coins is higher than one with 10 bronze 2p coins. This is quite different from the US situation where the coin dimensions are kept the same.
