1946-D Silver Jefferson? ... Update

Try flipping it in the air and compare to a war and non-war nickel. The War Nickel vibrates with a higher pitch, I believe.

Sure looks like the way War Nickels wear. Can't use weight because both alloys weigh the same.

This is a quick test to see if your coin contains silver. Place a tissue paper (Kleenex) over the coin. If you see white through the tissue where the coin is, it is silver, if you see the shadow or darker outline of the coin it is of another composition.

Got access to a metal detector? Run some tests with known War Nickels and coppernickel alloy pieces you will find the detector will generate different tones for the two different alloys. Then see which one your coin matches. Not absolutely conclusive but fast and pretty accurate, and if it does match the War Nickel then it would be worthwhile to have the specific gravity test done or spending the money for professional authentication. If it reads as coppernickel then it mostlikely is.

I am definitely interested in this topic. Hopefully you do have a silver!
I did have a 1965 Dime once that I thought may have been silver, but it was indeed just the toning and wear combo that made the clad piece look like that.

Coininvester: If the coin was minted on a wrong planchet, it will not have the mintmark above the dome. The dies for 1946 were not created like that, but being only one year from when silver nickels were minted, it is a great possibility that a couple silver blanks made it to the next years batch.

Thanks for all the kind advise ..... I appreciate the help!

Update here .... home from work again and I eagerly read all of your potential diagnostics tests ...... alas I do not have a way to measure specific gravity ..... nor access to a SEM machine. No metal detector in my house either.

I did get a chuckle out of the 'shielded ferrite core probe' suggestion from oih82w8! Great suggestion ..... but don't have one of those either!

I tried the kleenex idea suggested by Indian1 ..... and discoverd through an initial test that while this works for my 90% silver coins .... it is backwards for my war silver jefferson coins .... the silver showed up dark while the Cu/Ni alloy shows up as light. This coin showed up as dark.

I do have a desk top ..... and dropped 20 circulated War Silver to hear the bell-like ring ..... and this coin when dropped has a dull thud tone ..... just like other 1946-d in my grab bag.

Soooo ....... My best guess is this is just a case of unusual toning and no big deal.

I have placed the coin in a 2x2 and someday ... when I have access to better tools .... than I will revist the story.

Thanks for all the advise.

David

I sometimes forget where I am at occasionally, usually at work. I happen to perform Nondestructive tests, and the ferrite core shielded probes are readily available at the "office". I made some people mad when we performed conductivity measurement tests on their jewelry, only to find out that it was gold or platinum plated.

The metal detector generates eddy currents (currents generate fields and the those fields generate currents), so this method has merit to it. Hopefully you have some sort of display to differentiate between the two materials, and not the tone type. I se that you don't have a metal detector, but this may be a good time to have one demonstrated to discriminate the metal content.