I was in a coin shop selling some of my coins and in the back of my book I usually keep odd coins that I find. The dealer looked at this nickel and asked me how much I want for it but I don't know what to tell him. I think it's copper because there is a little oxidation around the montecello. Could someone help me with a price?
There were no copper planchets that size. It has an appearance of the annealing problem at various times that produced the "black beauty" type of discolored coins that are quite desirable and higher priced. You might search this forum ( use search button on the menu bar) for black beauty, annealing, sintered, and see what you can find. The color has been mentioned from cobalt blue/black to a dung colored amber brown. Maybe one of the Jefferson pros will correct me.
I can't tell from the picture what's going on. It looks to me like the lettering on the left side of the obverse is cut off, and the rim looks like it's gone on that side as well. This may have been struck on a cent planchet.
Krang, could you compare the coin with a normal nickel and a normal cent and tell us which one is the same size ( diameter) wise. If you have a scale that can weigh in fractions of a grams, such as 3.15 grams ( example), please weigh all 3 coins. This will help a lot in determining which metal it might be, and then we can try to figure out what process has affected it. Jewelers,or ask a science teacher ( grade school to college) will have such a scale ( Balance). Jim
That's odd, because I found a 1979 nickel roll searching today and it looked exactly like the posted picture (it was black). I let it soak in lemon juice + salt for 5 min. and then scrubbed the stuff off with an eraser. It turned out to be a regular nickel, which dissapointed me.
Yea...it was a black beauty coin, you guys were on the money(no pun intended). I took it to another coin shop and the dealer told me what it was. And to think I was thinking about selling this coin for 5 dollars. Thanks for everything guys.
aww man! are you serious?!? I don't know if the "beauty" part comes off but the dealer told me the chemical that makes black beauties black is kinda like a patina. A burnt patina kinda like burnt toast which i guess you can scrape off, if they happen to find their way out of the mint. Coin collector rule number #1-never clean a coin.
