5 Cents - George VI Victory, tombac

Canada's wartime nickel shortage forced the Royal Canadian Mint to abandon the five-cent coin's traditional composition entirely. Tombac — a brass alloy previously used in military uniform buttons — was adopted as the substitute material, and the coin was struck in a twelve-sided shape specifically so that vending machines and the public could distinguish it from the copper cent by touch alone. Production of tombac cents was contracted in part to the Dominion Brass Company in Lachine, Quebec, marking an unusual moment of civilian industrial conscription into the coinage supply chain.

The tombac composition was itself short-lived. By 1944, complaints about the alloy's tendency to tarnish badly in circulation prompted its replacement with chromium-plated steel.