Nickel Of A Different Color

Sure wish I had a XRF, but the next best thing is having an offer from SPP to zap your coin. Don't miss out on that one, he has done some of my steel nickels which we suspected of different plating results. Suspicions were correct and I have a MS coin with no plating to brag about. Raw steel strikes up very shiney, but is very vulnerable to oxidation.

Yeah Zonad all type of plating errors are definitely occurring here, I've been looking around for missing nickel plate with a intact copper plate but haven't found any yet myself. This sort of makes sense because it would stand out like a banana at an apple convention.

I've seen a few loonies that were plated but had their plating disappear because of improper cleaning or dipping between steps. I've also seen one quarter that missed the copper strike bath and the nickel plate subsequently peeled off. I mean there's at least 8 steps in plating these, I suppose mistakes are bound to happen, be nice to be able to catalogue each common error for a collection.

Post up a thread DBM, let's diagnose it and take a look ! Take a weight as well please if you have a scale.

True, an XRF is more useful to an error collector than a microscope, however the model I use (which is self-contained and safer to use) will set you back about $65K. I am always more than happy to zap coins for fellow numismatists, in the name of learning and publishing. I also have a colleague who has a SEM in his basement. An SEM can focus on a specific part of a coin, for quantitative analysis, but only of the coin's surface. I can do that as well, but it costs me $10 per coin to zap.

Should be non-magnetic.
The 1994 is Nickel Plated Copper.

True,
but by looking at your pictures, it appears that the Nickel plating is missing, so it would be non-magnetic.

If 1992 Canadian nickels are 25% nickel and 75% copper, then the alloy is fairly similar to British post-1947 'silver' coins, and this is exactly how I would expect one of those to look when I dig it up when metal detecting.