What is the value of a 1943 nickel with no mint mark?

Answer 1

All genuine U.S. nickels dated 1943 carry a mint mark. To indicate that the coins were no longer made of nickel due to wartime metal needs, the mint mark was moved above the dome of Monticello and for the first time Philadelphia used a P mint mark.

The following are possibilities for a missing / absent mint mark:

# The coin was struck from a die that had some grease or crud in the recesses that form the mint mark letter. Look closely with a magnifying glass because there should be some trace of the mint mark barely visible.

# The mint mark is worn off. War nickels contain a small amount of silver and are softer than standard nickels, plus the mint mark is more exposed to wear in its position without any surrounding design elements.

# You have a counterfeit, most likely a so-called Henning nickel. Henning was a counterfeiter in the 1950s who felt that he would be less likely to be caught if he faked coins instead of bills. However he was also not very knowledgeable, and mixed designs from different dates that created "impossible" coins like a 1943 or 1944 obverse mated to an early-1950s reverse. Needless to say the coins were ID'ed pretty quickly and he ended up carrying prison scrip for several years instead of money, fake or otherwise.