CRH 9/22/2013 : Nickels Aren't Always Made of Nickel!

I don't usually ask for nickel rolls from the bank too often since they're pretty involved to look through. Unlike quarters, dimes, and to some extent half dollars, nickels have to be date searched in order to find anything really of interest. That's because the nickel edge design hasn't changed since the late 1800's when they moved to the Liberty "V" nickel! Although you can sometimes find some cool things like Buffalo Nickels, Liberty "V" nickels, or the occasional 35% Silver "Wartime" nickels, you have to look through billions of 1964's and 1999's to get there. Literally, over 2.7 Billion nickels were minted with a 1964 mint year and about 2.3 Billion nickels were minted with a 1999 mint year. That's a lot of chaff for little reward. I did find a key date 1939-D nickel out of a roll once before, but it took a lot of tired eyes to come across it. I'm also figuring that someone else is coin roll hunting nickels in my area since I never come across anything very good.

I decided to grab a few customer wrapped rolls from one of my favorite banks figuring that I'd just try to "play the game and get lucky". When you're not searching any denomination particularly hard it's somehow seems more random. Oh well.

The teller was nice enough to tell me (pun?) that if I was searching for silver that I'd be happy with one of the rolls since he knew for a fact that it contained at least 1 Silver War Nickel. That's awesome! Finally a teller that doesn't take advantage of the fact that they get paid to sit there and coin roll hunt when they're not being pestered by annoying customers like me! I scooped up a small handful of his rolls and hurried home. When I peeled through the roll, I noticed a lot of reddish-orange color corrosion on most of the coins. That seemed a bit out of the ordinary. In that one roll that the teller pointed out I was able to get my first 35% Silver "War" Nickels of the year, both 1943-P.  You can tell that they are war nickels because they are the only nickels to feature the large P, D, or S  mint marks over the Monticello on the reverse! They are the lowest-value junk silver coin from the 20th century available to coin roll hunters today.

2 1943-P Silver War Nickels Found Searching Coin Rolls from the Bank!

Silver War Nickels have large P, D, or S Mint Marks on the Reverse