The 1943 P 5 cent piece (commonly, but erroneously, called the silver nickel) consists of mostly copper with a thin manganese layer electroplated to the planchets to save nickel metal for war uses during World War II, making them quite collectible. Some specimens may also come plated with silver due to improper preparation procedures before the electroplating step was added which would make one extremely valuable. Due to this error during manufacturing the 1943 steel cent, 1943 copper and manganese plated nickel and the 1944 steel cent are often referred to as errors or mules by hobbyists, but both issues were struck intentionally, making true errors from these series quite unlikely and therefore valuable