Making the die you would need in order to strike it a second time and have the outlines would be quite an investment of time, skill and money. If you wanted to fake a double strike why a Jefferson nickel and not something more valuable? I think if someone tinkered with it there would be more of them showing up as well.
Making a temporary die is fast and easy if someone knows how to do it and believe me there are many people out there that will do about anything. I have seen lots of man made error coins and this one has all of the things to watch out for like the sunken in line around the obv. side for example.
What would you make it out of like that quickly and easily that could take the press weight? You might be able to acid etch a piece of tool steel in a intaglio style process, but to get it deep enough as to not erase the existing features I would think could require some hand etching. I know that Henning made fake nickels, but he made hundreds of thousands of them.
Don't worry. Mike is like many of us here. He checks in when he has time. Hope he has something cool to say about the coin. Lots of great thoughts in this thread.
I just got thru taking another look at your coin and it is starting to look like a real mystery coin. If someone didn't tinker with it after it left the mint maybe something went wrong with the obverse die ( like say a loose die ) and caused it to bounce during the strike . I have some of the new dollar coins with this similar appearance where the reverse die struck in one place then bounced over and struck the coin again. I am a old time error coin collector and your coin is sure unusal looking. Sometimes when error coin folks can't determine what caused a coin to look like a error it turns out to be after mint damage. Sometimes it is really hard to attribute a error coin from just looking at a photo. Good luck with this coin and I hope it turns out to be a real mint error for you.
Can I send this coin anywhere to be appraised ? Like is there a grading company that can tell me anything about this ?
Just hang onto it and maybe someone will come along and know what you have.I don't think the coin would be worth spending very much on to get it examined. Either way real or altered it is a good conversation piece.
If the dealer is a dealer in regular coins and not error coins he or she may know nothing about error coins.
Congratulations. You've found a very rare error. This is an in-collar double-strike with a horizontal misalignment of the hammer (obverse) die on the second strike.
By the way, if anybody has the opposite sequence let me know. I still haven't found an in-collar double strike (or any sort of double strike for that matter), in which the first strike was misaligned and the second strike perfectly centered. I'm sure they're out there, though.