Thar's Silver in Them Thar Vending Machines....

I received a '42-P Jefferson Silver War Nickel in change from the
vending machine at work today. It is in Good condition, but not bad
for just buying a bag of chips.

Steve

Steve wrote:

I received a '42-P Jefferson Silver War Nickel in change from the
vending machine at work today. It is in Good condition, but not bad
for just buying a bag of chips.

Steve

You got a 700% error in change. ;-)

Alan
'home of the 35¢ nickel'

(Steve) wrote in message om...
I received a '42-P Jefferson Silver War Nickel in change from the
vending machine at work today. It is in Good condition, but not bad
for just buying a bag of chips.

Steve

All change that goes into a modern vending machine is retained in a
sealed change box which is usually replaced by an empty one when the
machine is serviced. When the machine gives you change or you hit the
coin return to get your coins back you actually get coins that were
loaded into tubes which feed the coin return on computer command.
They will not be the same coin you put in.

Most large vending companies send the collected coins to counting
houses and use rolled coins to fill the coin return tubes.

Modern vending machines rarely accept any silver coin and they will
come right back into the coin return after going through the
discriminator.

Alan Williams wrote:

Steve wrote:

I received a '42-P Jefferson Silver War Nickel in change from the
vending machine at work today. It is in Good condition, but not bad
for just buying a bag of chips.

Steve

You got a 700% error in change. ;-)

Alan
'home of the 35¢ nickel'

Believe it or don't, but I just found a 1942-P in my roll search this
morning. ;-)

It's falling below AG and it took a lot of looking to find the mintmark.
I don't see how these discolored 35% silver coins escape detection for
so long! A bit of a thrill, but the BU 1971 Full Steps I found is
probably a better value, despite being nickel.

Alan
'butt-ugly bullion'

Alan Williams wrote in message ...
Alan Williams wrote:

Steve wrote:

I received a '42-P Jefferson Silver War Nickel in change from the
vending machine at work today. It is in Good condition, but not bad
for just buying a bag of chips.

Steve

You got a 700% error in change. ;-)

Alan
'home of the 35¢ nickel'

Believe it or don't, but I just found a 1942-P in my roll search this
morning. ;-)

It's falling below AG and it took a lot of looking to find the mintmark.
I don't see how these discolored 35% silver coins escape detection for
so long! A bit of a thrill, but the BU 1971 Full Steps I found is
probably a better value, despite being nickel.

Alan
'butt-ugly bullion'

Alan,
I rescued 9 more poor souls from circulation today:

'48
'61-D
'68-D
'03-P
'04-P(Peace Medal Design)(x3)
'04-P(Keelboat Design)(x2)

Steve

Alan Williams writes:


Believe it or don't, but I just found a 1942-P in my roll search this
morning. ;-)

It's falling below AG and it took a lot of looking to find the mintmark.
I don't see how these discolored 35% silver coins escape detection for
so long! A bit of a thrill, but the BU 1971 Full Steps I found is
probably a better value, despite being nickel.

Has anyone ever determined the likelihood of finding war nickels in
circulation as compared to regular composition nickels? If you use
mintage figures as a guide, then you would expect to find, for example
1944-P (mintage 119M) to occur about as often as 1939-P (mintage
120.6M) all other things being equal. Obviously they are not;
from looking at others' circulation search results it looks as
though war nickels show up roughly 5 times less frequently than
their mintages indicate, or alternatively they behave like nickels
that have one-fifth the mintage, e.g. you'd expect to find 1943-P
slightly less often than 1949-P.


Alan
'butt-ugly bullion'

Tom
--
Tom Wu
http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~tjw/

All change that goes into a modern vending machine is retained in a
sealed change box which is usually replaced by an empty one when the
machine is serviced. When the machine gives you change or you hit the
coin return to get your coins back you actually get coins that were
loaded into tubes which feed the coin return on computer command.
They will not be the same coin you put in.

Most large vending companies send the collected coins to counting
houses and use rolled coins to fill the coin return tubes.

Modern vending machines rarely accept any silver coin and they will
come right back into the coin return after going through the
discriminator.


Thus, my recently acquired habit of emptying the coin tubes of the vending
machine in my dorm. Get a few dozen quarters, feed them in, his change
return and get fresh (though usually very circulated) quarters out. I
haven't found much in the way of error coins yet, but I've only been going a
day. This is what I do instead of studying....

Although it would appear that I'm going to stop, as I just found a
distinctive quarter that I recognize from yesterday.

Well, it was fun while it lasted...


"Brian" wrote in message
...
All change that goes into a modern vending machine is retained in a
sealed change box which is usually replaced by an empty one when the
machine is serviced. When the machine gives you change or you hit the
coin return to get your coins back you actually get coins that were
loaded into tubes which feed the coin return on computer command.
They will not be the same coin you put in.

Most large vending companies send the collected coins to counting
houses and use rolled coins to fill the coin return tubes.

Modern vending machines rarely accept any silver coin and they will
come right back into the coin return after going through the
discriminator.


Thus, my recently acquired habit of emptying the coin tubes of the vending
machine in my dorm. Get a few dozen quarters, feed them in, his change
return and get fresh (though usually very circulated) quarters out. I
haven't found much in the way of error coins yet, but I've only been going
a
day. This is what I do instead of studying....

Thomas Wu wrote:

Alan Williams writes:


Believe it or don't, but I just found a 1942-P in my roll search this
morning. ;-)

It's falling below AG and it took a lot of looking to find the mintmark.
I don't see how these discolored 35% silver coins escape detection for
so long! A bit of a thrill, but the BU 1971 Full Steps I found is
probably a better value, despite being nickel.

Has anyone ever determined the likelihood of finding war nickels in
circulation as compared to regular composition nickels? If you use
mintage figures as a guide, then you would expect to find, for example
1944-P (mintage 119M) to occur about as often as 1939-P (mintage
120.6M) all other things being equal. Obviously they are not;
from looking at others' circulation search results it looks as
though war nickels show up roughly 5 times less frequently than
their mintages indicate, or alternatively they behave like nickels
that have one-fifth the mintage, e.g. you'd expect to find 1943-P
slightly less often than 1949-P.

I can augment those figures, Tom. I've recovered a half dozen War
Nickels from bank rolls in the past three years. That's the same
frequency as 1956 (P) an initial mintage of 35,885,384. There were
roughly 777,000,000 War nickels made (all dates/mms) so my small sample
indicates that they have been selected against by a factor 22 times
greater than a regular composition mintage.

Alan
'one in every 3800 or $190 apart'

Alan Williams writes:

Thomas Wu wrote:

Has anyone ever determined the likelihood of finding war nickels in
circulation as compared to regular composition nickels? If you use
mintage figures as a guide, then you would expect to find, for example
1944-P (mintage 119M) to occur about as often as 1939-P (mintage
120.6M) all other things being equal. Obviously they are not;
from looking at others' circulation search results it looks as
though war nickels show up roughly 5 times less frequently than
their mintages indicate, or alternatively they behave like nickels
that have one-fifth the mintage, e.g. you'd expect to find 1943-P
slightly less often than 1949-P.

I can augment those figures, Tom. I've recovered a half dozen War
Nickels from bank rolls in the past three years. That's the same
frequency as 1956 (P) an initial mintage of 35,885,384. There were
roughly 777,000,000 War nickels made (all dates/mms) so my small sample
indicates that they have been selected against by a factor 22 times
greater than a regular composition mintage.

I had a sneaking feeling that my estimate of 5 would prove to be too
small! This would imply that the lower-mintage war nickels, like the
1943-D I found in a roll recently, are up there with the "regular"
key dates in terms of scarcity in circulation.


Alan
'one in every 3800 or $190 apart'

Tom
--
Tom Wu
http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~tjw/