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This morning, I pocketed my change, when I went from uniform to Civvies, and got ready to drive home. A quick glance at the change, several dollars worth accumulated over the last 2 weeks at work, revealed a 1942 nickel. Whilst not unheardof, that does make this piece of coin 67 years old. Nineteen Forty Two. WW2 was in full blow, Roosevelt was MFIC in the US, most all of us were not born, our parents were probably no our parents rather high schoolers or younger.

I paused - in a rare moment of down time to contemplate something other than work - to wonder . . . . .

Where has this nickel been?

What has this nickel seen? Heard?

Who touched it, when, where?

What tales could it tell?

Do you still have it? If so, is there a large P, D, or S over the Monticello dome? If so, it's a special composition.

Normally, nickels are composed of 75% copper and 25% nickel. However, during the war, they changed it to 56% copper, 35% silver and 9% manganese. To differentiate these nickels from the regular composition, they enlarged the mintmark and placed it above the dome. They're worth 77 cents in silver value.

From the top of my head -

It was minted at one of only 3 places - Philly, Denver or San Fran.

Nickels/change probably pass from consumer to merchant and back on the average between every 2 days to 2 weeks - sometimes I keep stuff in my pocket, sometimes it gets shoveled right back out.

But let's assume it was passed around 40x per year every year on average - that would mean nearly 2700 people had it.

Forget it, forget the numbers. That gets boring. I bet it was made in the Philly mint, hung around in some deep pockets in the NE, then some kid that grew up to be one of your war buddies blew it on bubble gum, then it sat around on that company's books for awhile before an accountant lost it to some ladykiller in a friendly game of cards. That guy, a Marine, took it on a ship w/him while he served in Vietnam, then when he went down, his best war buddy brought it home and gave it to the guy's girlfriend. She couldn't handle keeping it, gave it to her new boyfriend who took hunting trips in Alaska. He dropped it while fishing for some change buying some more ammo. The clerk picked it up, got arrested for being ugly and your captain hung onto it before blowing it on some drinks. You got it in change from the restaurant after paying cash for your last baked potato. Mystery solved.

Mark wrote:Do you still have it? If so, is there a large P, D, or S over the Monticello dome? If so, it's a special composition.

Normally, nickels are composed of 75% copper and 25% nickel. However, during the war, they changed it to 56% copper, 35% silver and 9% manganese. To differentiate these nickels from the regular composition, they enlarged the mintmark and placed it above the dome. They're worth 77 cents in silver value.

No marking there at all.

Allstarflyer wrote:that would mean nearly 2700 people had it.

All the more reason I'd like to hear this nickels story . . . . it has got to be interesting.

I'm willing to bet its seen more peep shows than Pee Wee Herman.

I've thought about the same kinds of things when I've seen old coins.

I also think about that when I see an old oak tree in front of a courthouse here in West Texas, wondering if it might have been used for a hanging 100 years ago.

And when I see old abandoned roads that have been bypassed by new interstate highways I think about the old cars or even wagons that were used on those routes before they were paved and I look at the landscape and think about how it must have been for those people in the wagons or very early cars when they saw the landscape not as merely a picture slowly passing in the windows at 80 mph, but as their next goal or even an obstacle that must be conquered.

A real eye-opener is going to old cemeteries and seeing the tombstones of people who were laid to rest more than 100 years ago, with birth dates in the mid 1800's. Even my great grandmother was born in 1902, more than 100 years ago, and she passed when I was 20 years old. There are several tombstones in one of the cemeteries in Midland of men who fought in the Civil War.

And then I look at some of the pictures of me when I was young that are in black and white and I realize how old I am. Maybe not as old as some others, but old enough to appreciate each of the years I've been alive and what incredible changes have happened on (and above) our Earth while I've been here.

I miss seeing old coins. The one- and two-shilling coins survived decimalisation by virtue of being 5p and 10p, but even they succumbed when those coins were shrunk some years ago.

Queso wrote:A real eye-opener is going to old cemeteries and seeing the tombstones of people who were laid to rest more than 100 years ago, with birth dates in the mid 1800's.

I find old cemeteries fascinating - and in this part of the world, some of the stones are far older. It's interesting to see the different "fashions", if you like, through the years - the Victorians' apparent need to cram everyone but the family dog onto the stone, the elongated Ss of 1700s script, and the even older skull and crossbones sinking into the ground. There's an even older cemetery in my parents' town, but until recently it was fenced off because it was unsafe. I'll have to visit it next time I'm up.

ANCFlyer wrote:T Nineteen Forty Two. WW2 was in full blow, Roosevelt was MFIC in the US, most all of us were not born, our parents were probably no our parents rather high schoolers or younger.

I paused - in a rare moment of down time to contemplate something other than work - to wonder . . . . .

Where has this nickel been?

What has this nickel seen? Heard?

Who touched it, when, where?

What tales could it tell?

1942 - My grandfather who flew for Pan American was suddenly in the Army Air Corps, flying VIP's between the states and England and my father started his tour in the pacific theater with the merchant marines.
Take time to talk to someone that live during that period before it's to late, some of the stories are incredible. Your coin will probably out last the entire generation.

BlueLion wrote:Take time to talk to someone that live during that period before it's to late, some of the stories are incredible.

Amen to that.

My great-grandad was in the (Royal) Navy in both world wars. (He was a stoker, and after years of shovelling coal into furnaces he'd think nothing of taking a Sunday roast out of the oven with his bare hands and waiting for you to clear a space for it!) He'd never talk about the war while sober, but when my brother and I were in bed and he'd wrapped himself around a bottle of whisky, all the stories would come out, gripping tales of convoy runs in the North Atlantic waiting for the U-boats to show up... He died in 1985, when I was still too young to stay up and listen, and Dad still curses himself for not having taped those stories. I recently asked if he could remember enough to write them down, but it's all gone.

The oldest coin I have in my wallet is a 1974 Swiss Franc which I found somewhere and use for shopping carts... everything else is less than ten years old - due to the introduction of Euro coins. That does however open up a new sort of "Oh look!" moments, because of the national sides of them.

So you can ponder "How did it get here?" once you get, say, a Finnish coin - was it a tourist who brought it back from Helsinki, was it a lorry driver who took a ferry, a backpacker on a train or a businessman on a plane?

aloges wrote:So you can ponder "How did it get here?" once you get, say, a Finnish coin - was it a tourist who brought it back from Helsinki, was it a lorry driver who took a ferry, a backpacker on a train or a businessman on a plane?

The UK pound coins have different pictures each year representing the different regions, which is quite boring because I'm sure they all go into circulation everywhere... but every so often a surprise will turn up. I've got a couple from Gibraltar, but also a Falkland Islands one and another from St Helena or Ascension. I always hang on to those.

According to Wikipedia, the Swazi lilangeni is made from the same blanks and the exchange rate is about 14:1... would make my vending machine binges cheaper...

BlueLion wrote:1942 - My grandfather who flew for Pan American was suddenly in the Army Air Corps, flying VIP's between the states and England and my father started his tour in the pacific theater with the merchant marines.
Take time to talk to someone that live during that period before it's to late, some of the stories are incredible. Your coin will probably out last the entire generation.

My father didn't get in to the military in WW2 . . . a critical occupation here in the states, Railroad Engineer. And flat footed also.

He has written many stories, I have them on hard copy, about his adventures on troop trains, and other railroad adventures whilst he was railroading.

A much simpler time IMO. Good reading nonetheless. Rather like listening to Paul Harvey.

He's putting them all on a CD now, so they don't disappear.

When I drove up to Alaska after I retired in 2001, I drove thru Montana, thru a place names Harlowton. The old roundhouse for the Milwaukee Road is there, where they switched steam for electric. Pop use to tell me tales about an engineer named Heinie Schneider that owned a Steak House in Harlowton and would run the Milwaukee Road's Hiawatha between Harlowton and some other town . . . when the train would get back to Harlowton at 8pm, Heinie would always have a steak dinner from his restaurant delivered to the locomotive at the depot on arrival.

There are a lot of other interesting stories he's published. Good reading. Pay attention, the world isn't nearly as ssimple as it used to be.