1900 Liberty nickel...What planchet?

I posted this awhile back....months ago, and it really failed to capture anybody's imagination. It was picked up in a lot of Liberty nickels. It weighs just 3 grams rather than 5 and is only about as thick as a dime.

I have surmised that it was struck on a foreign planchet, and was wondering if anybody here knows what foreign copper nickel coin the mint was striking in 1900 that weighed 3 grams.

Anybody know?

Nightowl

 

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I would recommend sending it to NGC or PCGS. They could tell you for sure what it is struck on.

 

I don't know much about U.S. Philippines Centavos coins but maybe you can look up the specs of those coins minted by the U.S. around that era.

 

Mike Ellis, who was twice president of Coneca is one of the graders at Dominion Grading Service. I think if I was going to have it authenticated, I'd send it to Dominion. With the scratches...I'm not sure it's even worth the bother. It may be able to be authenticated, but probably not graded.

I already know it's not a US planchet ...but I don't know that I want to make further investment in it. I've been pondering it for awhile now....maybe I will. If I have to join some expensive club to submit it....I'll just put it on eBay and start it a 99 cents and let it fly.

Nightowl

 

I did some research on it back when you first asked about it months ago. The mint only struck one coin close to that size and weight during the 1898 - 1900 period and that was the 5 colones from Costa Rica, but it weighed 4 grams and was 900 fine gold. The 1897 Dominican Republic 10 centavos comes close at 2.5 grams. It is 35% silver and 65% copper but I don't know its diameter. Since the coin obviously isn't gold the Dominican republic piec is about the only chance. The mint want very few coins or planchets for other countries before 1903.

 

Thanks Conder. I have seen a couple copper nickel coins on the heritage site, and well......let me get a link...

OK ....take a look at this and read the description offered for the coin. Can you find out what the weight of the Nicaragua 5 centavos was in 1899?

http://coins.ha.com/common/view_item.php?Sale_No=1121&Lot_No=6233&src=pr

As an aside.....I went to Dominion's site, and they have a simple submission for that you fill out....no fancy club to join, and no passing out hundred dollar bills. I could get it encapsulated for about 35 bucks.

Thanks........Nightowl

 

Found a seller offering an 1899 5 centavos on eBay here:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220484450234

I asked him if he would weigh it....and his response was:

Weighing the coin, I get 3.5 grams

My scale could be off a tad...his could be off a tad....who knows? I have not been able to find the weight and composition of this coin listed, and don't own the Krauss book.


Nightowl

 

I just noticed that it is as thin as a dime...
therefore it must be (in my opinion) fake.

With such a thin planchet the strike would have been very weak, instead it shows as strong as a regular coin.

I say it can't be real.....

you say?

 

Could be a fake, but I wouldn't hesitate about sending it off just to satisfy my curiosity...

 

Treashunt...I have shown pics of this to Mike Ellis and he feels it is struck on a foreign planchet. I guess the one thing I've learned....is that people know very little about these, so I'd better get it slabbed.

As for being thin....yes it's thin. Look at the amount of detail on the example at heritage. It's detailed as well. This is a legitimate striking error. On the edge, where the stars are cut in half...because it forced more metal into the stars than it did between them...it is almost faceted. I sincerely doubt that if somebody was going to fake it....that they would have reproduced that feature.

I'll send it out to Dominion Grading Service.

Nightowl

 

I agree with nightowl I believe this coin was made this way and is a genuine error. The base planchet remains a mystery tho. It has all of the characteristics of a coin that was struck on a smaller planchet. There is a rounding of the edges where the design falls off of the coin... if you were to cut a coin down it would be a sharp cut off. Also the thinner planchet with no real design loss besides some wear. This to me screams a coin struck on the wrong planchet even if we can't figure out what that planchet is.

 

Thanks Dutchman. I appreciate that. As a collector of US coins who has no real interest in world coins...I am not about to buy the Krauss reference. It'd be far less expensive to buy the eBay example and weigh it on the same scale....than to pick up the standard catalog of world coins.

Nightowl

 

Well I checked Krause and the size of the Nicaragua 5 centavos of 1899 seems about right. Unfortunately Krause does not give a weight for the coin. There is one really big problem with the possibility of it being struck on a 5 centavo planchet, The US mint did not make the 5 centavo planchets, nor did they strike 5 centavo coins. I'm not sure where the 5 centavo was struck but it was either in Mexico City, England, or Switzerland. How a planchet could get from one of those places and into the US mint would make and interesting story.

No diameter figure on the Dominican Republic 10 centavo either but it also appears to be about the right size. I think that is a better possibility since at least the planchets were in the mint at one time. A specific gravity would be very helpful since a copper nickel coin has a SG of about 8.9 while the 35% silver DOminican Republic coin is about 9.4

 

Thanks Conder101. I appreciate your input on this one.

I wonder where Heritage (or whoever wrote the description for the coin I linked to) got the idea that the 1899 5 centavos of nicaragua was struck by the US mint?

I think I'll end up sending this to Dominion for authentication....a little later.

I'll let you all know what it comes back as.

Nightowl

 

I'm only working from the photos & description from this thread. The coin looks smaller & thinner. Is it possible that it is simply a normal nickel that was acid treated & then circulated?

 

The details are far too crisp for that to be the case. As material is removed by acid washing, details become duller and duller, and the coin takes on a grainy appearance.

Here's a good article with pictures of just what you are talking about.
http://hermes.csd.net/~coneca/content/OhNo0035-AcidCoins.htm

Nightowl

 

Let me throw out another couple ideas. Maybe these were discussed in the previous thread.

Perhaps it was struck on a tapered planchet. The tapered planchet could have been punched from an edge of the strip which might also explain why the coin doesn't look exactly round.

Have you measured the diameter to see if it actually filled the collar? The edge looked kind of funny in the one photo.

Perhaps it was dissolved (atom by atom) in an electroplating cell where the nickel was the anode which dissolves Ni (atom by atom) and deposits the Ni (atom by atom) onto a cathode. Perhaps your nickel spent some time in an anode basket. The Barite Nickel electroforming system using Nickel Sulfamate has been around since the mid 1900s and other electroplating using elemental Nickel and S-Nickel has been around since the 1800s I think.

It certainly does look like it was struck on a smaller planchet like a 3-cent nickel or foreign planchet. However, I didn't find one that was 3 grams.

If you get an opinion from ANACS or Dominion, please let me know what they say.

 

There's no need to measure the diameter....it clearly didn't fill the die, so it's going to be undersized. I think the other ideas are grasping at straws given that other examples of this date have been found on smaller foreign CN planchets.

It'll be a few weeks likely before I get the coin off to Mike Ellis, but I am going to do that....and will report what Dominion has to say about it.

Nightowl

 

I am certain that it is not a fake. The planchet was undersized and underweight. That's why it has that slight off center struck appearance. As noted, the planchet did not fill the coining chamber. I am just not sure what it could have been struck on.

Interesting coin!

Bill

 

I just bought the 1899 Cinco centavos coin that was on eBay, so when that gets here next week...I can weigh both on the same scale and see if the weights agree.

While you say that the US didn't strike these coins....somewhere along the line, somebody is under the impression that they did. Maybe since this was only a 2 year type...the US struck only a few trials?....

Anyway...it was a cheap experiment. The coin was just 5 bucks.

Nightowl