What Year Nickels Are Silver? (1942 to 1945 War Nickels)

If you're sorting through a jar of old nickels looking for silver, one short stretch of years is the only one that pays off: 1942 to 1945. Those are the war nickels. Everything else, Buffalo nickels, the old V nickels, every Jefferson struck before 1942 or after 1945, is copper and nickel with no silver in it.

Even inside those years the coin has to prove it. Flip it over and look above Monticello. A war nickel wears a big P, D, or S right over the dome, larger than a normal mint mark and in a spot no other nickel uses. That was deliberate. The Mint wanted the silver coins easy to pull back out of circulation once the war ended. No oversized letter above the dome, no silver.

1942 is the one that throws people, since the change came mid-year. Philadelphia made both kinds: copper-nickel early, silver later with the large P. If your 1942 has the big mark over Monticello, it's silver. If it doesn't, it isn't, and that goes for every 1942-D. 1943 through 1945 you don't even need to check. By 1946 it was back to plain nickel.

Why those four years

Blame the war. Nickel was going into armor plating, so in 1942 the Mint took it out of the coin and used something else: 56% copper, 9% manganese, 35% silver. The silver is the whole point. It comes to about 0.0563 of a troy ounce per nickel, a twentieth of an ounce. Barely anything in your hand, but it adds up by the roll.

What they're worth

The silver sets the floor. At roughly a twentieth of an ounce apiece, a war nickel's melt value follows the silver price up and down. A few dates and grades are worth more to collectors, but most war nickels aren't rare, and people trade them by the bag for the metal. Junk silver, in other words: common circulated coins you buy for content, not for the coin itself. War nickels are some of the easiest to pick out of a pile, so stackers like them.

And ignore the "pre-1965 is silver" rule of thumb here. That one is about dimes, quarters, and half dollars (90% silver through 1964). Nickels never qualified. The war years are it.

Every nickel series at a glance

A couple of questions people ask

Is a 1942 nickel silver?

Only if it has the large mint mark (P, D, or S) sitting above Monticello. A 1942 with a small mark or none, including every 1942-D, is regular copper-nickel.

How much silver is in a war nickel?

About 0.0563 troy ounce. That is 35% of the coin's roughly 5 grams, so close to 1.75 grams of silver.

Buying or selling war nickels?

War nickels are one of the most common forms of junk silver, and on Pure they trade on a live order book instead of at a dealer's posted price. See what junk silver is bid and asked right now, and set the price you'll buy or sell at.