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The Shield Nickel debuted in 1866 as one of the first United States coins to be dubbed a “nickel.” Courtesy of PCGS TrueView. Click image to enlarge.

United States five cent coinage has been popularly known as the “nickel” virtually since its inception as circulating money back in the 1860s. While the silver half dime was struck through 1873, the moniker “nickel” for the five-cent coin with the Shield design was met with almost immediate acceptance.

Let’s delve a little further into nickel – the metal, that is. Why was it first utilized? Why did it see such widespread embrace? And why does it continue to be an integral part of our U.S. coinage?

The “Hard” Truth

Nickel was first utilized in U.S. coins to mint small cents, which debuted in 1856 with the release of a small number of Flying Eagle Cents, a coin that rolled out en masse in 1857. The Indian Cents that followed continued with the use of this nickel-dependent alloy – 88% copper and 12% nickel – from 1859 to 1864. The exceptionally durable nickel-inclusive one-cent coins were popular almost immediately.

There was much evolution in our coinage designs and composition during the 1850s. Many patterns were produced to test different designs, striking elements, and newfangled metal compositions or alloys. Interestingly, the first U.S. coinage to be dubbed a “nickel” was the three-cent coin produced from 1865 through 1889. This nickel-alloy coin rivaled the silver three cent coin struck from 1851 through 1873.

Intriguingly enough, the U.S. coins that so many people refer to as “nickels” are mostly copper. The maximum nickel content in any United States three cent or five cent coin from 1865 to present is only 25%, with the balance being 75% copper. Yet, these coins are colloquially known as nickels.

There’s a reason the U.S. doesn’t strike coins solely from nickel: it’s a decidedly hard metal. While this is highly beneficial to the overall durability and longevity of the coins produced, nickel proved difficult for the U.S. Mint to use in the mid-19th century with the technology available at the time. Consider the 1866 Shield Nickel, marking the coin’s first year of issue. The unequivocally solid metal made it difficult for consistently producing full strikes, making 1866 Shield Nickels with full details rare. The 1866 Ray Shield Nickels in PCGS MS66+ are among limited company, with currently only eight such specimens populating this finest-grade threshold.

“Ni” the Beginning…

Nickel, the metal, was used as early as 3500 BC as a natural meteoric nickel-iron alloy. Nickel is denoted as the chemical element Ni, number 24, on the periodic table, occurring between cobalt and copper. It is a ductile transition metal first isolated and classified, inadvertently, by Axel Fredrik Cronstedt in 1751.

The Swiss were the first to employ nickel in coinage in 1850. Because nickel is lighter than copper, the U.S. Mint employed nickel in composition with copper to both lighten the overall coin, but also because of the favorable durability. The composition of nickel and copper results in a product that retains its silver appearance and attractive surfaces longer.

A full two-thirds of all nickel produced on the Earth is used in stainless steel or some type of metallic coating that prohibits the formation of rust. The name nickel comes from a mischievous sprite of German miner mythology – nickel (similar to “Old Nick”).

We might not realize it, but nickel is virtually everywhere as a naturally occurring element. Coin collectors tend to associate nickel with the five cent coin, but many don’t realize the ongoing importance of the metal in other U.S. coinage struck since 1965.

While 75% copper, 25% nickel five cent coins sport a consistent silvery finish on all their surfaces, including the edges, the new sandwich-style copper-nickel coinage produced since 1965 employs an inner core of pure copper with a copper-nickel outer layer with the same 75% copper, 25% nickel overall composition. The nickel-composition outer layer adds durability and longevity to these coins. It’s easy for many to readily identify copper-nickel clad coins by the appearance of an orange or brown stripe around the edge, indicating the coin’s copper core.

And War Nickels Weren’t Really “Nickels”…

The term War Nickel, referring to the partly silver version of the United States five cent coin issued during the heart of World War II, is a bit of a misnomer. Nickel, so important for the war effort, was a strategic metal. Especially important for making artillery, nickel offers superb alloy characteristics and increases tensile strength, toughness, and elastic limit.

As nickel supplies were stretched thin during World War II, the important metal was removed from Jefferson Nickels in 1942 and the coin’s metallic composition was replaced with an alloy consisting of 56% copper, 35% silver, and 9% manganese. War Nickels saw not just a change in alloy for the five cent denomination but also a design change, with the addition of a large mintmark over the dome of Monticello on the reverse. It was also the first time a “P” mintmark representing the Philadelphia Mint appeared on a U.S. coin.

The Nickel Today…

Nickel continues to be an integral part of U.S. coinage. Interestingly, the buoyant price of nickel has led some countries to discontinue use of the metal in coinage. Contrastingly, in recent years it has cost the United States about nine cents to produce each five cent “nickel.”

These days, nearly half of the estimated 3.3 million tons of nickel mined annually comes from Indonesia, with the next-largest producers being the Philippines, Russia, New Caledonia (France), Australia, and Canada. You might say when it comes to the use of nickel in American circles, this is one precious product that is indeed “imported.”

And the import-ance of nickel in U.S. coins remains unquestionable. Ultimately, no metal has been so instrumental in supporting U.S. commerce except for possibly copper! But that’s another story for another time…