Over a decade ago, Doug and I were having one of our typical Cointalk disagreements; he was claiming that a Jefferson I had posted was AU while I thought it was uncirculated. During the discussion, I made the comment that my experience in dealing with circulated Jefferson Nickels was very limited. I was a registry collector who only ever saw coins that graded MS65 or higher, and spent virtually no time dealing with rolls or circulated albums where you would actually find sliders. I think most Jefferson Nickel collectors have limited experience with circulated Jeffs unless they engage in CRHing. So how do you tell the difference between and AU Jefferson and a Mint state Jefferson? Hopefully the information in this thread will help. We should start by looking at a circulated Jefferson that clearly shows wear. Below is an XF 1945-P war nickel that provides great contrast between the wear and protected areas. The obverse wear is strong on the shoulder & collar, jawline, cheekbone, eyebrow, and throughout the hair. The reverse wear is more limited to the columns of the portico and the pediment above. This gives a very good idea of where to look for wear on an AU coin where it is much harder to discern. Now lets look at a 1978-D that would probably grade AU53-55. At first glance, it appears to be uncirculated. Under closer inspection, there does seem to be some wear, but couldn't that also be from a weak strike. The answer is yes, the high points that experience wear also suffer from weak strike that can mimic wear. What we need to do now, is rotate (tilt) the coin under a lamp to see if the luster is broken. Now I can't post a video of the effect, but this next photo of the tilted obverse shows the wear quite clearly on the expected places. Please note the darkness of the wear that appears on the shoulder and the eyebrow. A softly struck mint state coin will not have these dark areas. The reverse shows a similar effect that mimics weak strike. When tilted however, the dark areas and broken luster emerge. Now that we know what to look for, we can use these skills to determine whether we have a slider or an uncirculated coin. This 1942-P war nickel should serve as a great example. I didn't take a tilted photos of this coin, and based solely on the reverse, I would say the coin is uncirculated. But if you look closely at the obverse, the two trouble spots (eyebrow & shoulder) show darkness that requires additional inspection with rotation under a lamp. When the NGC graders performed such an inspection, they found that the luster was broken and graded the coin AU58. While I considered providing photographic proof of the wear on that coin, I thought it important to point out that discerning a slider from a mint state coin typically requires and "in hand" inspection. But now we know where to look, and how to look.
Thanks for the tutorial, learned a lot. I usually look hard at the cheekbone and hair when trying to figure the difference between higher grades but tilting and checking for darkness/broken luster makes sense.
