1945-P War Nickel Has FS-801 Doubled Die and Curved Clip
Most rare coins have one feature that separates them from the pack. This 1945-P Jefferson Nickel has two.
The silver wartime nickel combines one of the Jefferson series’ major doubled-die varieties with a completely separate Mint production error. Its reverse carries the famous FS-801 Doubled Die Reverse. Meanwhile, the planchet itself has a 5% curved clip.
CAC Grading certified the coin MS63 and recorded its weight at just 4.75 grams. A normal 1945-P wartime nickel should weigh 5.00 grams. CAC identifies the piece as certification 98359027.
That combination makes this coin much more than another silver war nickel. It captures two different failures in the coin-production process on one piece of World War II history.
America Needed Nickel for War
The story begins with metal, not mint errors.
Before World War II, the Jefferson five-cent piece contained 75% copper and 25% nickel. However, nickel became a strategic wartime material. The military needed it for armor plate and other critical applications.
Congress therefore authorized the government to remove nickel from the five-cent coin. After testing several alternatives, the Mint adopted an unusual alloy of 56% copper, 35% silver, and 9% manganese. The manganese helped the new coins work properly in vending machines that had accepted the earlier copper-nickel pieces.
The Mint began striking the new alloy late in 1942. Therefore, collectors should remember an important distinction: not every 1942 Jefferson Nickel is a silver war nickel. Philadelphia and Denver struck regular copper-nickel pieces earlier that year. Philadelphia and San Francisco then produced the new wartime composition during the closing months of 1942.
From 1943 through 1945, however, all three operating mints produced the emergency alloy.
The change also created a numismatic first.
To make the emergency coins easy to identify, the Mint enlarged the mintmark and placed it above Monticello’s dome. Philadelphia coins received a large P. That marked the first appearance of a Philadelphia “P” mintmark on a United States coin.
Thus, the huge P on this 1945 coin did more than identify its birthplace. It announced a temporary coinage born directly from the demands of World War II.
The 1945-P FS-801 Doubled Die Reverse
Then the story gets much more interesting.
The Philadelphia Mint struck 119,408,100 nickels in 1945. However, that figure covers the entire issue. Mint records do not provide a separate production figure for coins struck from the FS-801 doubled die.
The FS-801 variety stands among the most important doubled dies in the Jefferson Nickel series. PCGS identifies three major doubled-die issues in the classic series: the 1939 Doubled Die Reverse, the 1943 Doubled Die Obverse, and the 1945 Doubled Die Reverse.
Collectors can identify the 1945-P FS-801 most readily by examining the lettering below Monticello.
Strong doubling appears on MONTICELLO and FIVE CENTS. Examples also show doubling through portions of UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. The separation becomes especially prominent toward the right side of the lower reverse. Heritage has described particularly strong spread on the final letters of MONTICELLO and CENTS.
NGC catalogs the variety as FS-801, CONECA DDR-001, and VarietyPlus VP-001. Older references identify it as FS-030.
Consequently, this is not minor machine doubling or a fleeting strike anomaly. The doubling originated in the die itself.
The Mistake Happened Before the Coin Was Struck
During the era of the 1945 nickel, Mint workers normally needed more than one hubbing to bring a complete design into a working die.
Between hubbings, workers softened the die through annealing. They then returned it to the hubbing press for another impression. If the die and hub did not align precisely during those impressions, the working die could receive two offset design images.
That is how a traditional doubled die forms.
More importantly, once the doubled die entered service, it transferred the same doubled design to each coin it struck. Therefore, the FS-801 does not represent a coin that bounced or received two strikes inside the coining press. The error occurred earlier, during die production.
That alone gives the 1945-P FS-801 considerable appeal.
This CAC coin, however, had already encountered another problem before it ever reached that doubled die.
A Second Error Was Already Hiding in the Planchet
CAC Grading identifies the coin’s second anomaly as a 5% curved clip and records its weight at 4.75 grams.
A normal wartime Jefferson Nickel weighs 5.00 grams and measures 21.2 mm in diameter. PCGS confirms those specifications for the 1945-P issue.
The missing quarter-gram on this coin comes from the incomplete planchet.
Coin blanks begin as strips of metal. A blanking press punches circular discs from those strips. Ideally, the strip advances the proper distance after each punch.
Sometimes it does not.
When a punch overlaps a hole left by the previous punch, the machine cuts the next blank with a crescent-shaped section already missing. Error specialists call the result a curved clip.
The incomplete blank then continued through production. Eventually, it reached the coining press.
And by extraordinary chance, the dies waiting for it included the FS-801 doubled reverse.
That sequence matters. The doubled die and the clip do not share a common cause. They developed during two completely different stages of production.
One occurred while the Mint made the die.
The other occurred while machinery produced the blank.
Only when the press brought the two together did this unusual combination become a single coin.
Two Collecting Worlds Collide
That distinction gives the coin unusual crossover appeal.
Jefferson Nickel variety specialists seek FS-801 because of its bold hub doubling. Mint-error collectors pursue clipped planchets because the physical shape of the coin documents a breakdown during blank production.
This coin belongs in both categories.
Moreover, CAC Grading assigned the piece MS63. CAC defines Mint State coins as pieces that show no signs of circulation. For MS63, CAC allows an average or somewhat weaker strike along with moderate scattered imperfections in the fields or focal areas.
That survival matters because this coin entered the world as circulating money, not as a collector product.
Collectors did save wartime nickels in quantity. Therefore, ordinary 1945-P nickels remain available in Mint State. Yet that fact does not diminish this piece. Instead, its importance rests on the intersection of a major die variety, a separate planchet error, and an uncirculated grade.
1945-P Silver War Nickel FS-801 Specifications
- Country: United States
- Denomination: Five Cents
- Year: 1945
- Mint: Philadelphia
- Designer: Felix Schlag
- Major Variety: Doubled Die Reverse
- Attribution: FS-801; CONECA DDR-001; NGC VP-001; formerly FS-030
- Total 1945-P Mintage: 119,408,100
- FS-801: Mintage Unknown
- Standard Composition: 56% copper, 35% silver, 9% manganese
- Standard Weight: 5.00 grams
- Weight of CAC Coin: 4.75 grams
- Diameter: 21.2 mm
- Edge: Plain
- Planchet Error: 5% Curved Clip
- CAC Grade: MS63
- CAC Certification: 98359027
Specifications verified through CAC Grading, PCGS CoinFacts, and NGC VarietyPlus.
A Five-Cent Coin That Needed Two Mistakes
The 1945-P FS-801 already ranks among the Jefferson Nickel series’ best-known doubled dies. Its wartime silver composition adds another layer of American history.
However, this coin goes one step further.
Before the doubled die ever struck it, the Mint had already produced an incomplete planchet. Somehow that clipped blank and the FS-801 working die met inside the same Philadelphia Mint coining press.
The result weighs only 4.75 grams.
It carries the huge P mintmark that first appeared on American coinage because the nation needed nickel for war.
It displays one of the major doubled dies of the Jefferson series.
And it carries a second, completely independent Mint error around its edge.
Millions of 1945-P nickels rolled out of Philadelphia during the final year of World War II.
This one managed to leave the Mint with two different production stories struck into the same five-cent coin.
