The Special Case For Jefferson Nickels

[GB_Amateur]

I'm making an argument that in USA coin detecting, the Jefferson nickel is unusual compared to its peers.  Let's look at a bit of history.

When coin designs change, it typically takes somewhere in the roughly 25-30 year timeframe for the previous design to disappear (not literally, but be down to say a few out of every 100 coins of a particular denomination).  Examples are the Buffalo-->Jefferson nickels (1938 design change), Wheat-->Memorial cents (1958-59 breakover).  But there are anomalies and when silver was removed from coinage (1964-65) it took less than 10 years for those coins to disappear.  The reason was because the bullion value exceded the face value of 90% silver coins.

Coin collecting in general (i.e. simple) terms depends upon recognizing dates and mintmarks and knowing which are the scarce/rare/valuable ones.  Consider the 1938-D Walking Liberty Half Dollar.  There were 39 different date+mintmark WL Halves minted from 1934 through 1947 but only one carried extra value.  You had to know that date and mintmark and then look carefully at both sides of each WL Half to see if you found one.  And because of their low mintage, on average you had to seach through a lot of them to hit your goal.  That was too much trouble for most people.

When silver coins became valuable, all a person had to do was look at a dime, quarter, or half dollar coin's edge because the new (worth less than face) clad showed an orange or dark gray tone due to its copper core.  (A keen eye could also recognize a difference the color of 90% silver vs. 25% nickel faces of a coin.)  That's why they disappeared from circulation so quickly, and with them went most of the fun from (cost free) coin collecting, other than possibly pennies and nickels.  Along with the low bullion value of clad coins they were also minted by the train car load.  Except for certain rare error coins (e.g. double dies) you weren't going to find any value by searching dates and mintmarks of coins minted after 1964.

Wheat penny attrition more/less followed the historical/traditional 30 year disappearance pattern, so by around 1990 there wasn't much to find by searching pennies, either.  But the Jefferson nickel was a different story, because the design didn't change until 2004 (to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase and Lewis-and-Clark Expedition).  That's a run of 66 years without a design change.  An exception was the 1942-45 "War Nickels", each containing about 78% as much silver as a silver dime.  Their dark gray color gave them away and although they lasted longer than their 90% silver brethren they still were long gone by the the mid-80's.

Fortunately metal detecting old sites doesn't suffer from the same problems just described for coin collecting as the 'loss' of coins from circulation is our gain!  However, if you're searching locations such as parks and schools which didn't exist (as public properties) before the 1970's then you are stuck with clad dimes, quarters, and halves.  However, Jefferson nickels that were dropped/lost in recent decades can still be among the key and semi-key date+mm specimens.

Here are the top 9 scarcest Jefferson nickels (only date+mm's with mintages fewer than 10 million) and their mintages:

Another advantage of detecting Jefferson nickels is that some detectorists don't want to be bothered digging nickels because (among other things) their digital Target ID's fall in the same range as a lot of common aluminum trash.  For older areas this can mean finding Buffalo and Liberty nickels where silver coins have already been picked clean.

 

 

[kac]

43 WL here, made me go look.

Great post GB

[dogodog]

Great post GB, My MK hits two things really solid, Dimes and nickles. I tend to dig the quarters, dimes first. Call me greedy, but some of my sites I might only hit once or twice a year. (hoping for reseeding). Honestly though I rarely trip up on a nickle. Oddly I might find 1 nickle to every 75  dimes and quarters. Seems like in my hunting grounds they are rare. Not sure why this phenomenon takes place, But maybe you could post the quantities of Pennies, Nickles, Dimes, Quarters that were produced in a given time frame than the others. Just might be that they had a lower mint production than the rest? Or someone before me loves nickles so much they dug them all Ha Ha. 

[Dances With Doves]

   I wish they made all nickels until 1964 like the  way they made the war nickel.They would have come out  in better shape from the  ground  and they would have silver.I have found a lot of war nickels and they only made them  4 years.

[Chase Goldman]

40 minutes ago, Dances With Doves said:

   I wish they made all nickels until 1964 like the  way they made the war nickel.They would have come out  in better shape from the  ground  and they would have silver.I have found a lot of war nickels and they only made them  4 years.

Well billions of nickels were in circulation at the time and were very heavily circulated.  The nickel and copper (75% copper, 25% nickel) were needed for the war effort.  Congress authorized up to 50% copper and 50% silver for war nickels, but gave the director of the mint latitude in choosing the composition as necessary to maintain the integrity of the coin.  The mint had to come up with a composition that that would satisfy the vending machine industry whose machines measured weight and in some cases conductivity of the nickels going in them - hence the 56% copper, 35% silver, and 9% manganese which enable vending machines to work just as they had with the traditional nickel composition.   It was a period in time where silver was less valuable as an industrial metal than copper and nickel, but it still held intrinsic value as a semi-precious metal that made it not cost effective to continue the silver composition further after the war concluded.  The mint doesn't really care how lost coins corrode in the ground. so a composition that resists corrosion from ground chemicals and salt is not really a consideration...hence zincolns.  Zinc is a highly reactive metal and is  often used in sacrificial anodes to stem electrolytic/galvanic corrosion in components exposed to salt or other corrosive agents.

[GB_Amateur]

26 minutes ago, Chase Goldman said:

The mint had to come up with a composition that that would satisfy the vending machine industry whose machines measured weight and in some cases conductivity of the nickels going in them....  (emphasis mine)

And they did a very good job of that since most Warnicks fall in the same digital TID range as the 25% nickel kind.  Contrast that with the 1943 zinc coated steel pennies vs. the 95% copper pennies they replaced where the conductivity requirement didn't exist.

[GB_Amateur]

1 hour ago, dogodog said:

Oddly I might find 1 nickle to every 75  dimes and quarters. Seems like in my hunting grounds they are rare. Not sure why this phenomenon takes place, But maybe you could post the quantities of Pennies, Nickles, Dimes, Quarters that were produced in a given time frame than the others.

I've looked at the dime vs. quarter mintage numbers but don't recall comparing to nickels.  I'll do that, but I'm sure it's nothing close to 75::1.  Which frequency of the N/M Multi-Kruzer do you typically use in these situations?  (I'll also pull my counts for the various modern coins to compare.  I was going to report on something similar for my end-of-year summary but decided not enough people care and my reports tend to be overly long to begin with.  If people want to read a book they'll go to the library and get one, not come here to read my posts!  😁)

[Rick N. MI]

Do you notice how many 1964 nickels you find. I find a lot of that year.

[kac]

I find a lot of nickels in spots hit by other guys probably like you said they are avoiding the aluminum. Nickels almost always have very consistent numbers here in land or at the beach and easy to pick out. Downside is most the nickels degrade fast much like coppers do.

[Joe D.]

7 hours ago, Chase Goldman said:

Zinc is a highly reactive metal and is  often used in sacrificial anodes to stem electrolytic/galvanic corrosion in components exposed to salt or other corrosive agents.

   Good point Chase,

   Like boats and outboards motors, maybe we should have some sacrificial zinc(cons) mounted on our salt beach and water detectors to protect them! At least then, they would have a use!🤣

6 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

I was going to report on something similar for my end-of-year summary but decided not enough people care and my reports tend to be overly long to begin with.  If people want to read a book they'll go to the library and get one, not come here to read my posts!  😁

   I disagree GB,

   I like your long posts! (and your's too Chase!!) Great information you guy's supply! And what's a Library? I haven't been in one of those since High School! And don't even get me started on the Dewey Decimal System!😂👍👍