Shield nickel question

Bingo, my first thought too.

Quite frankly, if I were in the OP's shoes, I'd just send the coin back. These are not uncommon coins, and a nicer one without the spot should be available without much hunting around.

Respectfully...Mike

 

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I just got off the phone with teletrade and after explaining my case and showing my photos vs there photos, they agreed to wave the return fee. Their customer service has been exceptional.

 

Wow, that's really good to hear! BRAVO!!!

 

I just took another look at the magnified picture of the obverse and noticed something odd. What's not really unusual is that the die for the obverse shows that it was polished quite a bit. Parts of the lettering are worn away - the left upright in the second A in AMERICA. The bottom of the S in CENTS. Also the S, A and S in STATES. What really caught my eye was the letters of UNITED. It looks like the letters ITED were probably polished nearly to the point of oblivion, but then the vertical bar portion of each letter was either re-cut or over stamped with what looks like a letter I. This is strongly evident in the T and E, maybe not so evident on the I and D. The Cherrypicker's Book might be interested in this.

 

When the finer lines in the lettering have disappeared, it most often can be attributed to die polishing.
And the most likely reason for die polishing is clashed dies.
But with your coin I don't see evidence of this (remnants of the obverse die or die polish lines).

Therefore I would consider a second possibility.
Low striking pressure.
Since the CuNi alloy was harder than anything else the Mint worked with, die life was shorter. And dies were expensive to produce.
So anything that would prolong die life was used, or at least tried.
Playing with the striking pressure to find the minimum that would do an acceptable job was often tried.
Your coin may have been one step in that adjustment.

 

First, the coin isn't mine. Second, my post wasn't specifically about the polished die, or weak strike if that's what you see, it's about the vertical bars in the letters I, T, E and D in UNITED. Whatever the cause of the missing parts of the other letters, those four letters have almost definitely been enhanced by re-stamping just the vertical bars of each letter. Although re-stamping dates and mint marks was common to enhance them, I don't know that I've ever seen just a portion of single letters re-stamped like this.

 

what is with the stupidity of those darn slabs. Are they not obviously stupid, and block the view of the face of the coin. Its so easy to allow for view of the side of the coin without this stupid ugly, and most importantly, intrusive, coin holder.

Ruben

 

Obviously we see this differently. I see the same weakness in the lettering but what I see as enhanced lettering on the ITED (especially the E) doesn't seem to show on other 1870 Proof examples.

(OP example)
(Ira & Larry Goldberg)
(Heritage Auctions)
(Bowers and Merena)
(Heritage Auctions)

 

What you are seeing in those missing sections of the letters are the result of hub breaks. The lettering on the hub used to create the dies has chipped and broken away. Since they are missing from the raised hub they are not impressed into the die and so the coins struck from those dies have the missing sections as well. Shield nickels, especially those of 1868, and ESPECIALLY those from the Hub of 68 are well known for these broken letters. They have nothing to do with die polishing.

I can't see the "enhancements" to the letters that you mention in the pictures provided, but they are probably Longacre doubling.

 

Thanks for the info, i always thought the missing parts of the letters was just a font they used as it appears on all the proof 1970's ive seen.

On a side note, were the same dies used for proof and business trikes for the shield nickels?

 

Forget about the missing parts of the letters where they blend into the field. Just focus on the vertical bar in the letters I, T and E. They seem obviously to be higher on the letters (lower in the die) than the adjacent parts of the letters. They don't even seem to be evenly connected to the rest of the letter.

To me (my opinion) it looks like those vertical bars have been re-stamped by hand. In all three letters, especially noticeable on the letter I, it has produced a slight clockwise doubling effect. It the letter T it disconnects from, and is higher than, the upper crossbar. In the letter E it has obliterated the connection of all three horizontal bars to the rest of the letter.

Whether this effect was caused by a repair of the die or of the master hub is beside the point. The point I am making is that there has been an enhancement of the lettering. My original statement stands, "...the vertical bar portion of each letter was either re-cut or over stamped with what looks like a letter I. This is strongly evident in the T and E..."