Shell Case Cents 1944-1945

These are another of the oddities that came with Dad's stuff.

Are they for real? Was there use made of spent ordinance casings for the minting of US coins?

I've never heard of the practice...but there are plenty of other things I don't know about.

What say you, Penny People?

 

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I believe they are bronze?

 

You will get mixed answers regarding this. Some say yes they were made from the brass casings, some say no, my personal opinion is that there is no way to connect the shell casings to the personal cents.

 

According to the record books, they were shipping back used shell casing from the front on shipping, which would have brought the guns to the front.

Someones going to argue this, but that's what the books say.

 

According to the Red Book, shell casing were used for cents made 1944 - 1946. However, there simply were not enough to casings available to make even one of those year's worth of the cents. If you can find it, there is a big discussion in a thread somewhere on CT.

 

I believe the most likely scenario was that some shell casings were brought back and subsequently were melted and ended up as cents. But come on, in a wartime situation do you really envision all the commanders going around and ordering the minions to pick up shell casings and dodge incomings from Jerry?

 

If you can attribute the holder they are in and date it's production, that should be enough as a collectible.

Historical value and the story are worth more than the truth or actual value of the coins in many situations.

 

It made for great marketing to shnooker people.

 

It was good propaganda for the war, kind of a take back for the failure of the '43 steel cents to catch on - now they have to have the boys collecting shell casings to make pennies.

 

Might you have a reputable source (citation) for this comment? Or are you just going from memory?

 

Here is one from a previous thread;

 

In Roger Burdette's new book United states Pattern & Experimental pieces of WWII, he does cite records that indicate that the mints DID use recycled shell cases and that the cases were from US training facilities.

"Railroad gondola cars filled with shellcases soon appeared at mint facilities."(291)

"US cents consumed 3,500 pounds of cartridge cases per day, six days a week, at the Philadelphia Mint. They were also the primary metal for a two-franc brass coin (21,000 pounds per day) and Peruvian coinage that was expected to consume over 275,000 pounds on completion.(292) The War Production Board had allocated 1,200,000 pounds (600 tons) to the Philadelphia Mint and equivalent amounts to the other mints. Shipments were scheduled to arrive every five days."

291 Based on descriptions in mint documents, most of the expended cartridges were 50 caliber. The army made sure no live cartridges were included.

292 NARA-CP, RG104, entry 328-H, box 3 "Philadelphia Mint operating records." Letter date 2/29/44 from Helen C Moore, Acting Superintendent, Philadelphia Mint to Director Ross.

NARA-CP is National Archives and Records Administration College Park MD RG104 is Record Group 104. That is the record group for records dealing with the US Mint.

 

So now we have two of the most knowledgeable people on the boards. One says shell case cents never happened, one says otherwise.

You know what that means!

 

Yes, it means that CoinTalk is extremely lucky to have some people who really do know what they are posting about, and take the time to do deep research.

 

Well we have heard from the peanut gallery.

 

The weights given by Roger would indicate that the shellcases only made up a portion of the material the cents were made from. 3,500 pounds a day would only produce half a million cents a day. At that rate, even working 7 days a week they would only be able to produce less than 600 million cents for all three mints combined. Since the total mintage for 1944 was 2 billion the shellcases could only account for about a third of the raw material.