I have had this coin for a while, maybe someone could help me finding out what may have happened. It is, as you can see, a 1944 P silver nickel. The discolouration is what I am wondering about. How could something like this happen. Looking at it in hand it is no doubtly UNC. Lustre does not show through the discolouration.
is the color embedded on the coin or on the surface? I've seen oil stain applied in order to clean coins that can have crazy embedded luster even toned look, but this is kinda weird looking, I guess the way to research this would be to find out what chemical will react with the coins metals to create this color, then determine when the coin was around these conditions, I think if it's one of the silver war nickels it's 35% silver, 65% nickel? or something like that.
Not unnatural, possibly unusual. It is possible that there was a ton of junk in the melting pot that day, as we are aware of, the war nickels commonly have tons of junk in there, hence the very common, ubiquitous laminations.
I don't really know how to describe it. Its not a lamination error. The discolouration is a part of the coin its not raised or lowered.
I see odd streaks like that frequently on Jefferson war nickels. There's one on eBay in a PCGS holder, I believe. I already deleted the item from my watch list, or else I'd post it here. I can't rule out chemical contamination from the picture, but I'd say it's probably just weird toning. That type of toning doesn't tend to bring a premium, and probably would deter a seller even at a normal MS price. I suppose you could put together a collection of "wood grain" Jeffersons.
