Statistics around the '43-D Jefferson

[Twitch]

My inability to find a '43-D Jeff is becoming comical. As such I'm asking for for stats from folks who both hunt nickels and keep reasonable records. Couple of questions:

1) How many $'s worth of nickels do you search on average per '43-D found? I'm at ~$23K worth of nickels with no '43-D.
2) How many war nickels do you find per '43-D (for example 1:200 war nickels is a '43-D)? I struggle to find war nickels to begin with so I don't know if I'm not finding enough war nickels or not finding enough '43-D's. There were ~870 million war nickels produced, with 15.3M of them being '43-D meaning that roughly 1 out of every 57 war nickels should be '43D's. I say this should hold because I don't believe the '43-D has ever been numismatically collected (unlike the '50-D for example. I've only found 150 war nickels overall, compared to 240 buffalo nickels and 11 V nickels.

Thanks for the info.

 

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[Immy]

You're making me drag out my stat books.

Ok, I searched casinos pretty regularly from late 1985 to 2009, scaling back quite a bit after that until stopping almost completely in 2012 when coin-op slots mostly disappeared here in Vegas.

Someone on another site asked me for an estimate of what I searched during that period and I came up with a rough guess of about a box worth per week, so...

2,000 nickels/week x 52 weeks x 23 years = 2,392,000 nickels or $119,600.00

In that time I found 427 war nickels, of which eight were 1943-D's.

In 1999 I started keeping track of each war nickel I found, so here are the discovery dates of the six most recent 43-D's:

6/26/03
8/19/04
1/4/09
2/15/09
4/12/09
9/15/09

That's an interesting cluster in 2009.

Of course in 2009 I was searching with 11 billion fewer nickels in circulation.

Hope you find one soon.

 

[GMan00001]

Between 2007 and 2013, I searched through approximately 1,648,695 nickels ($82,434.75).

I had a 27 more in 2006, but I can't provide the breakdown, so I left those out.


In those searches, I found 664 War Nickels which had the following breakdown:

1942-P (36)
1942-S (24)
1943-P (202)
1943-D (10)
1943-S (94)
1944-P (71)
1944-D (29)
1944-S (19)
1945-P (64)
1945-D (44)
1945-S (71)

So 10 of the 664 were 1943-D which is pretty close to the expected % you mentioned of 1 in 57.

My overall find rate was 1 war nickel every 2483 nickels, however, I had one partial box (36 rolls) in which I found 96 war nickels. If I drop that box out, my find rate drops to 1 war nickel every 2900 nickels.


Your war nickel find rate if you found 150 war nickels from exactly $23,000 would be 1 every 3067 nickels. In other words, your find rate is pretty close to my find rate if I drop out the one box.

For those same nickels, I only pulled 11 V-Nickels and 157 buffalo nickels, so although your war nickel rate is lower, your V Nickel and Buffalo Nickel rates are much higher than mine were.

 

[Clad2Silver]

Mintage figures could be skewed a bit because many were melted during the silver rush of 1980.

 

[Twitch]

Thanks for the insight everyone.

Immy - looks like you’re at one ‘43-D per 53 war nickels which is right about what you’d expect.
GMan - you’re basically right on it as well. And you correctly identified that my buffalo numbers are way off. I pulled $32 in CWR out of Jacksonville FL 5-6 years ago that had 172 Buffalo’s, 4 V’s, old Canadians and 100’s if old Jeffrrson’s, but no war nickels.
Clad2Silver - i’m Assuming that war nickels aren’t date sorted or preferenced in the melting process. The data above seems to support that.

 

[Rosco53]

I've searched 408,000 nickels, pulled 118 war nickels, and only one was a '43-D, if that helps. Not much of a sample size in comparison...

 

[Immy]

I've searched 408,000 nickels, pulled 118 war nickels, and only one was a '43-D, if that helps. Not much of a sample size in comparison...

According to averages you're slightly overdue for your 2nd one.

 

[jrf30]

"How many war nickels do you find per '43-D (for example 1:200 war nickels is a '43-D)? I struggle to find war nickels to begin with so I don't know if I'm not finding enough war nickels or not finding enough '43-D's. There were ~870 million war nickels produced, with 15.3M of them being '43-D meaning that roughly 1 out of every 57 war nickels should be '43D's."

I hvae 128 war nickels. 4 are 1943D. (2 are 1944D and 3 are 1945D for me)

Most is 29 of the 1943P

Hope that helps you