1944 No P Jefferson Nickel - Counterfeit ?

Wow what a great find! The other dates Henning claimed to have on his nickels were 1939, 1946, 1947, 1953 and one other date he didn't specify. He claimed to have made 6 obverse dies and 6 reverse dies. So not all of the reverse dies had the hole in the R. Your coin is the one with the hole. I do have a 1939 with the hole in the R that I feel is a Henning. I posted a photo of it (with Wheezy's help) in an earlier post. If you do a search you should be able to find it.

The point was made in an earlier post about how we compain about Chinese counterfeits but yet buy Henning counterfeits. I feel there is a big difference between the two. Henning made his counterfeits to pass off as a 5 cent piece in regular commerce just like we do with a genuine nickel. I feel this makes his counterfeit a part of the history of our country's coinage. There are plenty of other counterfeit items such as colonial coins, bust half dollars, obsolete paper money and national banknotes just to name a few that fall into this catagory of contemporary couterfeits. The couterfeits such as the Chinese counterfeits are specifically intended for the collecting community and in my opinion are not directly tied to our country's coinage. To me, this difference is major. I collect coins and paper money with a strong interest in the history behind them and I feel the contemporary counterfeits such as the Henning nickels belong in this history. I can understand others distaste for counterfeits, especially with the Chinese counterfeits. But I think there are collectables in counterfeits.

I don't understand why someone would go through all of the trouble to counterfeit such a small denomination? Any info?

Because there is often a collector demand for contemporary counterfeits. They were made to circulate as money which gives them a bit of a story, and they were made for just a brief time an are no longer made. The Chinese counterfeits and other counterfeit key dates are made to try and rip off collectors and more can be made at any time.



But the silver blanks needed would also cost more than twice what the nickel blanks did. In fact the dime blank would have had 7 cents worth of silver in it compared to about Two Cents or less worth of metal in the nickel blank. So the profit margin per coin was the same, about Three Cents less other expenses. But that would mean about thirty cents for every dollar face value in dimes, but sixty cents for every dollar face value in nickels. So the nickels would be more profitable.



To "fly under the radar" the theory being that the lower the denomination the less likely people are to look at it and notice a counterfeit, and in the coins it would tend to return the most profit per dollar in face value. Henning also counterfeited five dollar notes but he wasn't very good at it.