1941 Nickel 0

[Rick McBryar]

I am new to coin collecting and last week I found a 1941 and 1956 nickel. What is the best approach or means and methods to determine the value and If a given coin should be graded.

[JKK]

Depends on your logic behind having it graded/slabbed (two terms for more or less the same thing). They're cool finds, but not rare.

If the question is whether the value will justify the cost, figure a value into which you could drop $30-60 and not miss it too much. An $800 1909-S VDB penny? Yes. Your $0.10 nickel (as above), not so much.

If the question is whether it would be nice to have with a set of similarly graded coins (for example, a full set of Jeffs), well...you could easily enough obtain higher grades and then slab those. If you could buy a mint state 1941-? example for a buck, for example, you probably would do that for a Jeff collection. Stressing, again, that for a full collection of uncirculated Jeffs, you'd end up spending, I don't know, $2500+ to slab a collection that might cost $150 to buy the actual coins.

If the question has to do with verifying some special variety and you're not sure, and you don't mind the $30-60 cost, maybe. We didn't get the reverse, so we don't even know the mint mark, but special varieties are rare.

Edited December 24, 2019 by JKK

[Greenstang]

You are only showing one side of one coin. Hard to tell if you have a special variety or not.

We don't even know where the nickels were minted.

Edited December 24, 2019 by Greenstang

[kbbpll]

It's cool to find coins that have been bouncing around for 70+ years, but value-wise most of these have to be uncirculated / mint state before they're worth more than $1. To give you a start, go here for values https://www.ngccoin.com/price-guide/united-states/nickels/25/ then scroll down the "XF" column and see that very few "key dates" or varieties are worth anything.