An old coin

[Danny Tse]

Purely by chance during a cash transaction, I was given a nickel that was minted in 1941. I only realized when it was minted when I "inspected" it last week. It looked all worn out and has some dirt embedded in the outlines to the image of Jefferson. The image of Monticello is almost completely smoothed off. The ridges along the edge of the coin have also been smoothed off.

Given that the US didn't enter WWII until December, 1941, it's more than likely this coin was minted before WWII. Wow! To have something that's almost 70 years old. Just image how many hands have touched this coin....or how many items this coin has been used to purchase. The stories this coin could tell would be amazing!

[thuffman03]

That was minted when a nickel was worth something.

[tcrossma]

I have a few buffalo nickels from the 1800's, and a coin from ancient Roman times -- not sure exactly how old it is. Along with a collection of early 1900's pennies, dimes and nickels. But yeah, these days you don't find the old coins in general circulation as often as you did 20-30 years ago. I used to collect coins as a kid, and to this day I still have the habit of looking at most change I'm given to see if there's anything "good" there.

[bobman1235]

I have a few coins from the 1700's (Italy and somewhere else) that I inherited from my grandfather. Always meant to get them appraised...

[treitz3]

But yeah, these days you don't find the old coins in general circulation as often as you did 20-30 years ago.You sure are right about that!

[mhardy6647]

Purely by chance during a cash transaction, I was given a nickel that was minted in 1941. I only realized when it was minted when I "inspected" it last week. It looked all worn out and has some dirt embedded in the outlines to the image of Jefferson. The image of Monticello is almost completely smoothed off. The ridges along the edge of the coin have also been smoothed off.

Given that the US didn't enter WWII until December, 1941, it's more than likely this coin was minted before WWII. Wow! To have something that's almost 70 years old. Just image how many hands have touched this coin....or how many items this coin has been used to purchase. The stories this coin could tell would be amazing!

Nickles didn't (and don't) have ridges :-) The ridges were put on silver coins so that folks couldn't 'shave' them to collect up silver.

FWIW Many really old nickels I see are an interesting and very dark brown/olive color (some kind of nickel oxide thing I surmise).