1942 S Nickel, Non Silver - Does It Exist?

How it came to exist seems obvious if real from the US Mint. The only question would be how it got out. I can see them testing the machines as part of routine maintenance. When they are going that fast at those pressures, the last thing you want is someone standing near when a gear beaks or a belt that can fly off an hit an employee. Maybe calibrating a new machine. Plausible that the wrong dies were used or jsut any found laying around to test the press.

The only question is how did it leave the mint? Did it occur during the war and was overlooked during an evacuation where security said for people to just "GET OUT" and that happened to be in someones pocket or hand?

If It turned up in my box of nickels I would probably put it in a baggy since my folder has no hole for it and forget about it for a few months until I go to sort the baggies of oddities and then ponder what to do with it all along forgeting about this thread or reading the article linked above.

I would think that when they make new dies, they mint a some coins to test it out. The machinist may have just taken his test pieces and tossed them in a bin of 1941 nickels not knowing that there would be a switch to silver.

I'd have to check Roger Burdette's book on the experimental coins of WWII but I always suspected this was the result of a test of the striking quality of the proposed alloy done at the Philadelphia mint. They just grabbed a pair of nickel dies and ran the test. One of them was a small mintmark S mint die. (Philadelphia made the dies for all the mints so the S mint dies would be on hand there.)

Another possibility would be a test piece made at San Francisco when they were testing to see what pressure setting they would need to strike the new composition and they simply used an old rev die.

"unknown collector" when it clearly states in the article I posted (first link when you type in 1942 S nickel non silver) the name of the guy..lol

See, but the thing is, it isn't slabbed though.

Which means the TPGs are not ready to call it genuine since the mint claims it never existed. And to prove that it's real would be next to impossible at this point.

No it doesn't. Read it again. In the article you posted it says if was found by "someone". Frith is the collector that bought it from the finder.

I took his comment to mean "Why did they let him keep this coin that should not have gotten out, when they have confiscated other coins that should not have been released?" The fact he mentioned gold coins was not really pertinent to the question. He could just as well have said aluminum cents, bronze clad steel cents, Martha Washington patterns etc.

I'm saying it was a general question, not specifying any particular unauthorized release. "Why haven't they gone after this coin when they have gone after others?" My answer explained why.

And yes he probably did have the 33 double eagle in mind as it is the first one most people think of when they consider unauthorized coins the government has tried to confiscate.