1883 Shield 5 Cent

I know quite a bit about early date Large Cents, but practically nothing about Shield Nickels. Could anyone with knowledge of die varieties and condition give me a hand? I darkened the photos for detail so the actual appearance is significantly whiter.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Well you might have to wait for Howard for this one. All I know is it looks nice and the only variety I really know is 1883/2 - not sure this is one.

 

There's a lot going on with this. Die chips above D and at the rim right of the right lower arrow. Apparent die breaks from D, one going left and going through the leaves and another going right through the cross and then on into the leaves at right. The 1 is lower than the 8 which is further right than most. The 5 on the reverse has a fill at the tip keeping it from being fully struck which is apparently common at the legend. The 3 also has a chip on the lower part of the upper curve. I'm not sure how many of these are die variety related and how many are die deterioration related.

 

Oops! 8 is lower than the 1.

 

This specimen looks to have environmental damage as from the op first post and the color of the image. From the images provided there is nothing other to say then that it has scratched on the reverse , a few die chips and die cracks. It looks Au. Or better but again from the images hard to tell .

 

There's no significant variety here. I only see die deterioration. What are the scratches to the left of the 5? It looks like someone was trying to scrape something off.

 

That obv. die crack runs from 9:30 thru 3:30... Off center strike on obv....rev. die rotation...obv. die crack from 7:30 to 5:30 ...another die chip @ 5:30...date looks off center to right...nice slider cond...58-62? The hardness of nickel really deteriorated the dies!...this same obv. die is common to the date, with many examples for comparison on E-BAY.

 

I found this on eBay which looks like the same obverse die, but not the same reverse die.

 

From 1873 -1883 only obv. Hub C and the reverse hub llc were used to mint shield nickels .

 

I assume the variations in dies from the same hubs can only be distinguished after wear or injury to those dies making early die states virtually indistinguishable. But the cracks separate them in the later die states.

 

Remember that a shield die was just about done at 10,000 strikes if not before. They are thicker then other nickels the dia. Of a shield 20.5 mm, compared to 21.2 mm
Since they all weight 5 grams you can see the platchet was thicker.
Now compared to the three cent nickel made of 750 copper and 250 nickel 1.94 gram in weight and 17.9 mm.
They were not a custom to working with the material at the thickness of the shield.
Also take into account that even the nickel three cent piece series are full of die cracks in a lot of cases.
I see quite a few with die cracks at 10 and 2 as well as other areas on the coin.
Shields are a lot of fun especially if you like varieties .

 

Well my first love will always be Early Large Cents, but the Shield nickels have me intrigued. This means There should be about 150 dies for 1883 if each die wore out in about 10,000 strikes. Actually twp dies so 300 total dies for obverse and reverse. One year could make the search a full time hobby. That's about the number of the entire early date series.

 

Well then I'm sure you'll like these to look at ....

 

I'll make a number of comments on the above posts without referencing each individual one.

I see no die variety on this coin. The cracks are very typical of a shield nickel and are not considered die varieties (if cracks were die varieties, then nearly every shield nickel struck would be a die variety!).

The marks on the reverse to the left of the big 5 look to be scratches where the coin was rubbed. The broken tip on the big 5's flag is post-strike damage, not an issue with the die or a fill.

The 8 appears lower than the 1 because the date was entered at a slight angle to the southwest. Shield nickel dates were punched with a 4-digit gang punch and it is very common for the punch not to have been completely level.

I do not see a chip at the lower part of the upper curve of the 3. It looks like a speck of dirt to me.

@Marshall who posted a coin he thinks is the same obverse die but a different reverse die: Very sharp eyes to spot that obverse. I agree it is the same obverse die. But I think the reverse die is also the same. The reverse suffers from an unfortunate lack of die markers, but I do see what I think is a matching die crack from F (oF) to A (America), and I am pretty certain that there are matching die cracks across the top of ATE (stATEs). (Perhaps you were misled by the post-strike damage to the flag of the 5?)

By 1883, the mint had managed to extend die life somewhat, so 10000 strikes is on the low end. They may have been able to extend die life to as much as 25000 strikes. Of course, that's an average, so it's quite possible there is an 1883 die that only lasted 10000 strikes.

If I missed a question, please repost and I'll do my best to answer.

 

This is correct, but some people (me included) would say your terminology is slightly off. But a lot of people do use the terminology the way you did.

I may have posted this here before, but here is how I use terminology:

Die state: denotes how long the die has been in use. This is determined by analysis of the microscopic flow lines on the coin.

Die stage: denotes a visible change in a die (such as a crack).

Using these definitions, it is perfectly possible for a coin to be an early die state but a later die stage (e.g., for a die that cracked soon after it was installed). It's also possible for a coin to be a late die state but an early die stage (e.g., for a die that has been in service for a long time but never acquired any visible deterioration like a crack).

I would have used the term "die stage" in your original comment. Some people use "die stage" and "die state" interchangeably to mean the same thing, but I think one loses an important concept if one does that.

 

Coming from an Early Large Cent background, I do use State to encompass both events.

The reasoning is that there is a sequence to the emission of coins from every die and anything which marks a dies progress through the sequence is a new state/stage.

I personally hate tying the die state to a variety which includes both the obverse and reverse dies. While there is a correlation for die pairings, it is far more haphazard than some suggest. They just pulled dies off the shelf as needed rather than use them individually until retirement interrupting the symmetry of sequencing.

My understanding is that Hubs first began being used in 1798 Large Cents with presses being insufficient to transfer detail to the dies. This required touch ups to the individual dies which are the markers used to determine their die variety. It is especially difficult for 1800 to find these small differences on worn coins.

But it appears that the date was still being added to individual dies in 1883, even if the individual punches changed from single digits to complete dates.

But each individual die tends to wear differently and break differently. I lean toward die breaks for identification on such similar dies because they are a fingerprint of the individual die rather than of the hub. I think the stages are more of a generic term for the life of a die. At least on Early Cents, individual die stages are difficult to separate from strike issues which cause similar loss of detail.

I like numismatic discussions more than marketing ones. Thanks for the dialogue.

 

I believe you are right about the reverse being the same, the spec at the 3 being PMD or foreign material on the coin.

But the oddity at the tip of the 5 is more likely to be from a strike issue with it's surface matching the field. The rub is certainly post mint.

There is also a die crack running diagonally across the tip of the 5 to the star above E and then down to the star below E on both examples.

 

There is no question in my mind that the oddity at the tip of the 5 is post-strike damage from being struck by another object.

The proof of that is obvious if you believe that the two reverses are the same die. The later die stage coin (the second photo pair posted) does not show the damage to the 5. So that damage can't be in the die because it wouldn't disappear.

It can't be a strike-through because that would affect the fields before the devices.

 

States vs Stages: If I'm reading you (@Marshall) correctly, it sounds like perhaps you are reversing the meanings that I proposed. Perhaps that's consistent with EAC usage. Regardless, I think one loses valuable information if one uses states and stages to mean the same thing.

Yes, in 1883 date punches were still being used to enter dates into finished dies. That's why date placement is an important part of shield nickel attribution.

I agree with you completely on the importance of die markers such as cracks to the task of attributing coins. Sometimes they are all I have to go on. An early die state coin with no cracks can be much harder to attribute.

When I encounter die varieties that are paired with a different die on the other side, I attribute to the die with the variety and note the pairing. This is not an infrequent occurrence in shield nickels.

I am always interested to hear perspectives from collectors of series for which I am relatively uninformed (like early copper).