1942 Jefferson Five Cents 1938-1964 MS66

History

The Jefferson five-cent piece arrived in 1938 through a public design competition, and it kept its copper-nickel alloy until the Second World War forced a change. On March 27, 1942, Congress directed the Mint to remove all nickel from the five-cent coin by October 8 of that year, since the metal was needed for aircraft such as the P-51 Mustang and B-29 Superfortress and for corrosion resistance on Navy ships and landing craft. The legislation allowed the Treasury to vary the replacement alloy and add base metals, which mattered because a simple half-silver, half-copper mix would not trip the discrimination devices in vending machines and turnstiles. Manganese was added to reproduce the electro-magnetic signature that the prewar 25 percent nickel had provided, and testing produced the alloy used from late 1942 through December 1945.

Details

Felix Oscar Schlag, born in Frankfurt in 1891 and a resident of the United States from 1929, won the 1937 competition and its $1,000 prize with the obverse and reverse designs; the nickel was his only coin design. The wartime alloy is .560 copper.350 silver and .090 manganese, and the first coins struck in it came off the presses at Philadelphia on September 21, 1942. The issue carries a large P above the dome of Monticello, the first P mintmark ever used on United States coinage after 15 decades of unmarked Philadelphia striking. Because production of the silver type began only late in the year, 1942 is a two-type year at Philadelphia.

Features

The obverse carries a left-facing bust of Thomas Jefferson, and the reverse shows Monticello, both required by the terms of the 1937 competition. Legends follow the pattern established in 1938, with IN GOD WE TRUST, LIBERTY and the date on the obverse and E PLURIBUS UNUM, MONTICELLO, FIVE CENTS and UNITED STATES OF AMERICA on the reverse. Separating the silver coins from the copper-nickel issues is a matter of mintmark size and placement: regular copper-nickel pieces show a small mintmark to the right of Monticello, silver pieces show an enlarged letter above the dome, and the 1942 Philadelphia Type 1 has no mintmark at all. Denver struck copper-nickel nickels with the small D through 1942, while San Francisco produced no copper-nickel coins that year and entered the series only with the silver composition.

Notable facts

• A memorandum from Mint Director Nellie Tayloe Ross to Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau dated September 1, 1942 instructed the Philadelphia engraver to place a mintmark somewhat larger than usual directly over the dome of Monticello.
• The year 1942 was the Philadelphia Mint's sesquicentennial.
• The Mint struck more than 870 million silver nickels between 1942 and 1945.
• The composition change is estimated to have saved roughly 435 tons of nickel and copper for the war effort.
• The oversized mintmark was meant to make the silver coins easy to withdraw after the war, but the recall was abandoned as impractical and the pieces circulated freely until silver hoarding took hold in the 1960s.