1946 Jefferson Nickel On Silver Planchet Value?

Well of course a standard nickel AND the silver composite nickels both weighed 5 grams, so weight is of no real help here.
If confirmed to be a 35% silver planchet left over from the previous years, you would have a very valuable coin.
Careful testing and grading of it would be something I would do for certain.

So after reading about the specific gravity of war vs. ordinary nickels, I decided to experiment. All the 10 vintage nickels tested between .54 and .55 on the water displacement test, both ordinary and War Nickels alike. I then returned to Google, only to find several discussions on this forum. The conclusion is that the water displacement SG test is pretty worthless for War Nickels. The density of the silver is balanced out by the much less dense manganese. The Ag-Cu-Mn alloy and the Cu-Ni alloy both have a SG near 9. So it is nothing like testing 90% silver coins against their post-1965 clad counterparts.

It does make sense. If you want to keep using your existing coin dies and infrastructure, and you want the resulting coin to be the same mass and operate in vending machines, then you really need a replacement alloy that is around the same density as the original.

Apologies for suggesting specific gravity as an effective method of distinguishing War Nickels from normal nickels. It clearly isn't, at least not at the accuracy you can measure with a normal inexpensive coin scale and a cup of water.

Seems like more work. but may satisfy some. Thanks, Doug.

Silvio, your equations are of course correct. There are two separate things here.

1. I read a prior CCF post that said the specific gravity of an ordinary nickel is 8.92, and a War Nickel is 9.25. I didn't actually fact check that statement, I just accepted it as probably correct.

http://goccf.com/t/367674#3155495

2. My setup was quick and dirty. Pipe temperature tap water in a shot glass on a pocket scale. But if the alloys were a considerably different density, there should have been a repeatable difference regardless of container, scale, medium.

If the 8.92 vs. 9.25 number is accurate (and I don't know that it is, but it seems reasonable), then you would need a legitimately precise setup to detect the difference. That imprecision is probably way within the accuracy tolerance of a $10 pocket scale.

NumismaticsFTW, I'm with you and datadragon, I have plenty of worn 1946 nickels that look just like the OP's, and it's unlikely they were all struck on wartime planchets

So I got a guy to use his gun on it and its not silver at all. I decided to go to the first jewelry store and have them retest it for me out of curiosity and this time I watched. They rubbed it on a sharpening stone (it looked like) and dropped acid on the dust then came back and told me again....Yep theres definitely silver in it. I was shocked and just said thank you and walked away

Hmm. could there have been a trace of silver on the sharpening stone?