Mystery Of The War Nickel

[schoolofhardNox]

2 hours ago, JCR said:

None of the War Nickel I have dug had any serious corrosion. The discoloration varies some. I may have time to see if there is any correlation.

(edited my original response)

I'm assuming you are digging in dirt. If that's the case then the consistency of our coinage is in question.

[JCR]

Yes, all dug from inland sites. There is one from my adolescent coin collector trove that is not a dug coin but it is mixed in & I’m not sure which one it is any more. I need to look at the relative wear and see if it effects TID like it does on Silver Dimes.

[GB_Amateur]

Although it's popular to say this happened at the mint, that claim ignores the fact that I measured over 160 Warnicks that had never been in the ground.  Not a single one read higher than 13-14 (alternating) on the Equinox 800.

So if the alloy is off the intended 9% manganese, 35% silver, 56% copper, the smoking gun points to changes from environmental action.

The fact that SoHN's recent samples in some cases read considerably higher than standard composition nickels and in other cases, measurably lower could mean there are multiple things going on, not just one simple explanation.  Mother Nature likes to do that sometimes to keep us from getting a big head, thinking we've got her figured out.

[JCR]

I got the time to re run my War Nickels in a more organized fashion. I only have 6, which is a very small sample compared to @GB_Amateur. I don’t have a MInelab, I used the Rutus Versa since that is what I am concentrating on currently. Park  Multi F Low conductors,  DD 23 coil.

1942S = 69

1943S = 54

1944S = 36

1944D = 35

1944P = 39

1945P = 38

 All with comparable wear.

A regular 1984 Jefferson = 33.

A new Zinc Cent = 58.

 From my small sample it seems the early war issue alloy may have been adjusted over time as war demands became more focused.  Frustrating for our purposes, but interesting.

[GB_Amateur]

1 minute ago, JCR said:

I only have 6, which is a very small sample...

The key disctinction for previous studies was whether the coin came from the ground (I.e. was found with a detector) or simply came from loose change or bank rolls.  I specifically chose the latter (160+) to try and distinguish between in-ground vs. not.  What's the history of the six you measured?

Either way, thanks for the data.  We can never have enough (reliable) data.

[JCR]

I am not positive, but 2 non dug, 4 dug by myself. I could figure it out from my notebooks if I had to.  The interesting thing to me was the mint date trend. Do you still have all your sample coins? Got a little spare time😉.

[GB_Amateur]

38 minutes ago, JCR said:

Do you still have all your sample coins? Got a little spare time😉.

Well, I have them but they're in a bank safety deposit box....  (I took them out for the study but then returned them.)  I know I have all dates+MM's for the Warnicks but whether they were all represented in that 4 roll set used in the study, IDK.

Because I tend to discriminate by VDI when searching parks and schools that weren't frequented outside the last 100 or so years, my data from recovered-from-ground coins are not meaningful.  I would expect every one I've found to have a common USA nickel ID else I likely would have skipped over it.  But, yes the ones I've recovered have all been ~12-13 on the Equinox.  However, as just indicated, selection bias renders that not meaningful for this discussion.

 

[BigSkyGuy]

Last winter I had the opportunity to test 2,008 non-dug War Nickels that I borrowed from a coin dealer friend. Out of 2008, 3 were out of spec (0.15%), which he let me keep. Two biased high and one low as shown in the pic. The numbers refer to VDI on the Manticore, AT-G mode. The mint was very careful to match the weight and conductivity of the standard 75% copper/25% nickel coin so that they could be used in vending machines. Having a rate of 0.15% out of spec coins seems very good, given the difficulty in alloying manganese with the other metals. The rate of dug nickels which read anomolously high is well above the 0.15% rate coming from the mint, so the manganese leaching theory seems plausible.

[GB_Amateur]

11 hours ago, schoolofhardNox said:

I'm assuming you are digging in dirt. If that's the case then the consistency of our coinage is in question.

In question, sure.  But the fact is, common soil contains chemicals that attack much of our coinage.  Saltwater is particularly hard on 90% silver coins as you and many others here have shown.  That tends not to be the case with most inland soils.  Coins whose composition is dominated by copper is a different story, as you likely know.

The Warnick composition is so much different than any modern coin that I'm familiar with because of the 9% manganese.  I've said it before but I'll quantify.  Of the 94 elements found in/on the earth which are 'natural' (I.e. not human synthesized), 69 are considered metals with the remainder either semiconductors (silicon being the poster child) or non-conductors (all the gases plus some solids like sulfur and the odd-ball liquid -- at room temperature -- bromine).  Of those 69 metals only one (I emphasize one) has a worse conductivity in pure form than manganese.  It happens to be plutonium (element 94 so coincidentally the highest atomic number of the naturally occurring terrestrial elements).  I recall they had better uses for that substance during the war than alloys for coins!

[GB_Amateur]

4 minutes ago, BigSkyGuy said:

Last winter I had the opportunity to test 2,008 non-dug War Nickels that I borrowed from a coin dealer friend. Out of 2008, 3 were out of spec (0.15%), which he let me keep.

Great work!  Thanks for sharing.  Now we have examples of non-dug coins which are out-of-spec.  Excellent measurements.