I bought this a while ago. Just got around to looking at it closely. Its got a bunch of die breaks around the UNITED. Overall, its a pretty nice coin imo. Its about the nicest i can afford right now. I's just happy to get one. I just wanted to know what y'all error experts thought about it. Thanks, Tyler
well im certainly not an expert but I think its great!!! I actually just posted some pictures of my new coins and it wasnt until then that I noticed a die crack hidden amongst the toning so I know how cool it feels!!!!! Great find!!!!
Hi, During that period, die making was not as sophisticated as it is today with respect to heating the dies to harden them. What they did was good but not "that" good As a result, it is not unusual to find three cent pieces and five cent pieces that were struck by dies with numerous cracks in them. It is not much different in more recent days and I can think specifically of all the problems with dies cracking while 1983 cents were being struck. The reverses are often seen with die cracks from the "corners" of the Lincoln Memorial radiating toward the rim. On some coins, like the shield nickels and three cent pieces, it is almost not considered an error as it was acceptable to use the dies until they had no life left. Most collectors of three cent pieces look for examples without die cracks as they try to find coins with early die state strikes. Thanks, Bill
The 3CN are great for variety collectors. Here is a die break on my 1865 3CN, which also has a repunched date. FS-3N-1865-302. I think I have a 1866 similar to yours. If I find it I will post it. Jim
The Mint had a GREAT deal of trouble with the 25% Nickel 75% Copper alloy. It was much much harder than the bronze, silver and gold alloys and the dies just literally fell to pieces Add to that the fact that they were coining large numbers three cent and five cent pieces and the Mint die shop was going crazy trying to keep up with the demand for dies. For the most part the coinage of all the other denominations were experiencing die lifes of around 150 thousand to 200 thousand coins per die pair. So in 1866 they needed about 99 sets of dies for cents, 32 sets for two cent, 1 for trimes, 2 for half dimes, 2 for dimes, 2 for quarters, 6 for silver dollars, 1 for gold dollars, 2 for quarter eagles, 1 for three dollar, 2 for half eagle, 2 for eagles, and 8 for double eagles. That's 160 pair of dies for the year. But the copper nickel coins were only getting a die life of about 15,000 coins per die. So for 1866 they needed 320 pair of dies for the nickel three cent and 983 pairs for the shield nickel! That's 1300 for the copper nickel coins and 160 for everything else. So they went from have to make around 300 dies a year in 1864, to 2900 dies in 1866. They couldn't keep up, shortcuts were taken, dies were sent to the presses incompletely basined and the hardening process may have been rushed. And since they were chronically short on dies, they used them as long as they could until they failed completely. It is actually more difficult to find Nickel three cent and shield nickels without cracks than with them.
i have a 1866 triple die obverse/die clash-obverse/8 die cracks.On the reverse almost no errors slight doubling and tripling.no die clash only 3 die cracks is this common or a rarer var,,have and with post
It would be hard to say if it is a rare variety or not. There is still a lot of work to be done in this series and most of the dies and/or varieties still haven't even been cataloged yet. Then the only way to tell which are the rare ones would be a long term study to determine how often the different varieties are seen. This still has not been done. Then finally there is the problem of the collector base. For the most part the only thing rarer than a rare nickel three cent piece variety, is a nickel three cent piece variety collector. Even people who just collect the series by date are rare.
