So here is a 1996-D Nickel. It weighs 3.8 grams, is the correct diameter but it thin, very thin, about the thickness of a dime. Any Ideas? I put another nickel next to it for comparison.
The design is enlarged. It might be a regular nickel that someone squeezed somehow. If it was a different planchet, the design would not be enlarged. The color of the metal is a little off also. Maybe it's a fake coin that someone ground to a regular nickel diameter.
Interesting! While at first I thought it might have been on the wrong stock after looking up some details I'm not so sure. It seems to be on the right metal for a nickel coin since you can't see any clad layer on the edge. I'm also going to say that it has been faked. How? I don't know. Speedy
I think it is a "Texas nickel" that has been beaten between a couple pieces of leather so that it would spread out in size, and then it has been cut back down to the size of a nickel. That would explain the enlarged image (from the pounding), and then cutting it back down to size would explain the weight loss. The only way to get that weight otherwise would be to strike the coins on a foreign planchet (But the coin is dated 1996 and the mint stopped striking coins for other countries in 1984. Sometimes one will sneak in with the cent planchets or dollar planchets but it is very unusual and normally they get struck as cents or dollars.) But if that was the case the image would be normal sized
