U.S. 5¢ coin

Got this in pocket change today: a well circulated U.S. nickel from 1944. That's old for pocket change around here... never mind being American (I'm in Canada).


There's a spot of color to the right of the portrait that looks like a break in the coin's skin. Weren't American nickels made of nickel back then? Was it some wartime thing?

 

Hi,
Those war time 5 cent pieces all had their mint marks over the dome on the back. P for Philadelphia, D for Denver and S for San Francisco.
greg

 

Just a curiosity to me. I wonder if it's actually been out in circulation all that time.

To me, it's worth a nickel.

 

Very nice small piece of history, if it could only talk, just for fun I'd hang on to it.

 

I once bought a coin set at a thrift store. One year's Canadian coins, one of each value. Nothing special about them except that it was a half price day and I was able to buy the coins for less than face value. I just put them in my pocket and spent them. Thing is: Canada mints a 50 cent piece that no one ever uses. The set included one. I took it to my local coffee shop, and it was an adventure getting them to accept it all.

 

Hi,
You should have seen the cashiers face when I used a silver dollar coin little bigger than a quarter. She looked at me like I was a bank robber. She called her manager over and showed him the coin, he said it was fine. The girl put a dollar in the till and kept the coin. She had never seen one before. It was a common Susan B. Anthony coin.
greg

 

Moreotherstuff ya got me thinking, I had a few old coins stash away. Here is a1909 wheat penny, buffalo nickel with the date worn away, and a 1904 liberty dime in real bad shape. None of these have any real value beyond face. All were acquired while getting change back except the dime, don't know where that one came from.

 

Hi,
We all get weird coins once in a while. My favorite was a 1568 Elizabeth I six pence found in the mud when they were building a new highway in Philadelphia in 1974. When I was having a new window installed in my 1905 farmhouse there was a brand new 1905 Liberty dime installed under the sill. They used to install new coins when they built new houses.
greg

 

Wow 1568 now that's a find!

 

Nice collection! And in very good condition, Thanks for putting those up.

 

Hi,
Your last coin the V instead of 5 cents caused a lot of problems. People were gold plating them and selling them to new immigrants as 5 dollar gold pieces.
greg

 

Seems like I'm always getting Canadian quarters I've never seen before. So many commemoratives. If someone wanted to counterfeit quarters, they'd only have to get the obverse right; they could put anything they wanted on the reverse: who'd know?

 

Of U.S. coins valued for their silver content (no additional numismatic value) War Nickels are generally disliked by collectors and coin dealers due to their low silver content (35%) and the difficulty to refine them to extract the silver. Some of the coin dealers in my area sell War Nickels for below the silver value and they purchase them for 30/40% of silver value. This is unusual since there is usually small price spreads on junk silver coinage.

 

I love old coins, especially the big bronze ones. I'm not familiar enough with silver coins to risk buying them, but I won't complain about spending twenty or twenty-five cents on the older ones, even if that's above catalogue value. Here are some recent ones I found (albeit none that are American).

 

This is a really fun thread! I have a cache of foreign and odd American coins, as many people do. None worth anything beyond face value, I'm sure.

 

When I got a change order for work a few weeks back. There were 2 rolls of silver dimes in it! a clerk had me get him some change which included a roll of dimes, and 5 minutes later he called for another roll of dimes, I asked him what was up, and he showed me the silver dime roll, and sure enough there was another silver dime roll in the bunch. If I remember right ,there were at least 4 Mercury dimes mixed in the rolls.