Posting Jefferson nickels in order by date

Some of my 70's mint set Jefferson's have a dull, cloudy look from being in the cello all those years. I always wonder how the original owner stored them; probably in an attic.

 

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1998-D
For the next week or so, all these nickels came with the Dansco.





This is the last coin in this section of the page. From the group photo it sure looks more like the proofs than its neighbors.

Tomorrow we slide out the next mylar strip and dive into a new group of nickels.

 

1998-S Proof
This starts the next group of nickels from the Dansco. We're at the last group on the 5th page. The album has just one more page and ends at 2011.

 

1999-P

 

1999-D
These recent issues are getting hard to put a price on. The NGC website evaluates a MS 66 at $12.50, and a MS67 6FS at $175. But they have graded fewer than 5 rolls altogether.

Heritage has a couple of old auctions that were $70-$120, but it turns out those are off-center mint errors. Then there's a MS67 FS sold three years ago for $587.50. For that kind of money, well, ...

 

1999-S Proof
Wrapping up the millennium.

 

I missed posting the only 99 I have.

 

Six full steps too!

 

2000-P

 

2000-D

 

2000-S Proof
Someone got very excited about the millennium. There are 6528 graded at NGC alone - compared to the low hundreds graded of contemporary business strikes. Most are PF69 and PF70 Ultra Cameo. So this coin has lots of company.

Oh, and all of them are selling for less than the cost of grading them.

 

2001-P
A coin show purchase to fill in an empty slot. As I recall the vendor had a very thick 3-ring binder with many dates of Jeffersons in 2x2s.

From this point forward to 2011, only about 13 holes had coins in them, so the other 27 coins were bought to complete the set. The highest cost was $3.24 (since I don't often buy graded coins).

 

2001-D




This is how the surface gets that unusual texture. The planchet must have been dented and marked everywhere, and those marks were hammered flat, but not eradicated, during striking.

 

2001-S Proof

 

2002-P




This closeup shows how the surface attains its black quality. In this case the planchet was relatively free of marks, but it has a fine texture of minute areas of irregular dark finish.

 

I am wondering if this effect is from the way the planchets were prepared, like the Kennedy Half's. The mint in the 80's bought a new machine that literally seemed to polish the blanks with steel balls.
It is called "Burnishing". I wonder if it hardened the steel so much that the planchet imperfections were hard to remove when struck.
I am not sure but the high speed presses could also be part of the culprit.

 

Very intriguing. I did not know that, but it sure makes sense.

I tracked down some images of rolled steel for comparison. This is apparently hot rolled steel, in contrast to cold rolled steel which is cooled to room temperature before the rolling process. But it's the kind or grain structure I would expect to see.

Figure 3: (a) Microstructure of 52100 steel as supplied by the manufacturer, in a hot rolled condition. (b) The microstructure after spheroidisation. Micrographs courtesy of W. Trojahn.

The point being, that rolling with steel balls should create a similar grain structure in the Nickel alloy that we see in the steel above. Granted, the scale is different, but the fields in the photograph in post #455 show the same kind of small domains that absorb or reflect light differently.

It is very easy to imagine the planchet started out rough and those dings and gouges were then hammered flat. It would pinch together the sides of any marks. Left behind would be traces of small domains where the metal flows one way or another depending on how the ball bearings beat down on it.

Since this is similar to the hardening process used to make cold rolled steel, which is used for bearing shafts and other hardened applications, I absolutely agree that these hardened small regions would retain their identity even through the striking process.

I like the theory.

 

2002-D

This is the first coin on the last page of the Dansco.


Photographing the surface of the coin fails to convey the mirror-like quality of the reflections. I need to solve that problem.

 

Sure not a 70 but nice toning

 

2002-S Proof