Henning Nickels

I know. I can't figure out why these two pictures aren't coming through. Henning nickels are counterfeit nickels made by Francis Henning in the mid 50's. He was a counterfeiter and not a numismatist so he paired a 1944 obverse with a non wartime reverse creating the 1944 no p nickel. He used regular nickel composition material instead of the war time composition. Besides 1944, he also claims to have made 1939, 1946, 1947, 1953 and one other obverse die that he never revealed the date. He was convicted and jailed for this in 1956. His nickels are not good quality but good enough to still circulate. I found the 1939 about 2 or 3 years ago.

Nope I don't know
LOL
I hope that these posts teach me something I've been trying to learn and have asked about before here. There are at least 4 Hennings and maybe a second variety of the 1944 No P.
Glad this discussion popped up again. Lets get to the bottom of it.

Wheezydog, the hole in your R is not the diagnostic hole and might just be damage. Take a good look at it and let me know what you think. The hole that is always talked about is the same one that I showed above in my 1939. All of my 1944's with the hole look like this. None of my 1944's without the hole look like yours at the R. So if your smaller hole is not damage then maybe you have another one of hte reverse dies. That is what I am trying to do by getting as many Hennings as I can. There is very little information out there on these and I am trying to build as much info as I can and then write an article. Wheezy, are you coming down to the York show on April 11th? Or maybe the Lancaster show April 4th? I can bring my 1944's and my 1939 for you to see.

Yes, the government confiscated everything in his warehouse and reused the planchet material he had since it was so close to their spec. That is why the dates other than the no p are hard to distinguish. I read before that the weight of the Henning nickels is 5.4g but when I weighed mine I always got 5.0-5.2g. When I weighed nickels from the 50's they weighed 4.7g-5.1g. So I thought the 5.4g was high and the weight of the Henning is too close to use as a factor. Since then I have found some less worn Hennings and they weigh 5.3g. So now I think weight could possibly be a factor but only on the less circulated Hennings.

Oh my, would you like me to post your 39 pyrbob?

There, I added the R for you. What you need to do is re size your image in WINDOWS PAINT. If you use reply to post to add an image, use the green camera link. Browse for where you have saved the image which needs to be under 90K and upload it.

What I do after that is delete the text before and after the actual URL of the image. Then I highlight it and click on the image link or you can just put url /url in the brackets before and after with typing.

Yes I really like that coin a lot! You lucky dawg you!

Thanks, I'll try the pics again. I was trying to get just under 100K. I'll resize to under 90K. Thanks for the reply on the nickel. I have had several dealers familiar with Henning nickels look at it now and they all get excited over it. It is one of the highlights in my collection. It might not be the most valuable coin I own but it is the one I prize the most. And it always helps when you pull it out of circulation.

They come up ( the 1944 z ) about once or twice a month and have been getting about 25 bucks a pc. in decent shape. One thing to remember, these designs were taken from circulated coins, so don't be expecting to find clear defined coins. Still, look for wear on the high points and on the rims.
I think the two shown in this post are higher end condition examples of what you will ever find even though they only have VF detail maybe at best.

Some may not feel these are important coins or counterfeits to be more correct, but I know a couple of us like them. They are quite collectible for some of us.
I know they have been asterisked in the Red Book for a long time now, when I found mine I felt very lucky.
I would just love to have one of each in my collection before I leave this crazy world.