I was reading Mr Bowers' nickel book and came across a reference to 1943/2 P nickels made with the pre-war planchets. I must have read book that a hundred times, but never caught that reference before. Anyway, I have an overdate/DDO the color and texture of which I have always wondered about. It looks more like it was struck a Cu-Ni planchet, but I always assumed that it had been cleaned or something that changed its color. I got it out and did some comparisons with normal silver and normal Cu-Ni nickels. I weighed several war nickels and got an average of 4.91 and then weighed Cu-Ni coins and got an average of 5.00. The nickel in question weighed 4.99, but it is likely that weight tolerances for the two planchet types overlap, so no help there. I then did a tissue test, and it looks like the nickel in question more closely resembles the Cu-Ni planchet. I know its difficult to accurately capture color, I have included a few pictures below. If I understand the software correctly, you should be able to click on the thumbnail and see the larger version. Let me know what you think. The first picture shows that the coin actually is the overdate The next picture shows the obverse of the coin The next two pictures show the coin in question adjacent to two silver nickels (above and to the left) and a Cu-Ni nickel (right) The last two pictures show the result of the tissue test. The first is color enhanced, the second is un-retouched. The silver coin is to the left, the Cu-Ni coin is on the right.
the silver war nickels are only 40% silver but there should be a difference in the way they look unless the coins have been cleaned
I've never seen any claim to a 43/2 struck on a coppernickel planchet. As to the wieght tolerances they are exactly the same on both the coppernickel and the 35% silver composition. The only way to prove the composition would be x-ray analysis or Specific gravity.
OK. I re-did the tissue test under normal daylight conditions and with thinner tissue. Below is the result. The subject coin is in between a silver war nickel on the left and a typical alloy nickel on the right. To my eye, the subject nickel is more like the typical alloy nickel than it is to the silver one. Also, I have an electronic balance that measures to 0.01 grams. I would like to do the specific gravity test, but there are as many versions of how to do it as there are people posting about it. I can weigh the coin dry and then submersed in water, or I can weigh the coin and then weigh the water with and without the coin submersed - both have been presented as methods. Further, there are numerous different calculations listed. Does anyone have a definitive method and the appropriate calculations. Finally, I can't seem to find a definitive set of specific gravity measures for the two nickels. If they in Bowers' or Nagengast's books, I can't find them. TIA for any info you may be able to provide
OK, I found the specific gravity values. I was looking all over the interwebs and then thought to use the search tool here. Conder101 posted these values at some point in the past - Silver 9.53, CuNi 8.92. Thanks.
