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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Conder101, post: 920988, member: 66&quot;]The Mint had a GREAT deal of trouble with the 25% Nickel 75% Copper alloy.&nbsp; It was much much harder than the bronze, silver and gold alloys and the dies just literally fell to pieces&nbsp; Add to that the fact that they were coining large numbers three cent and five cent pieces and the Mint die shop was going crazy trying to keep up with the demand for dies.&nbsp; For the most part the coinage of all the other denominations were experiencing die lifes of around 150 thousand to 200 thousand coins per die pair.&nbsp; So in 1866 they needed about 99 sets of dies for cents, 32 sets for two cent, 1 for trimes, 2 for half dimes, 2 for dimes, 2 for quarters, 6 for silver dollars, 1 for gold dollars, 2 for quarter eagles, 1 for three dollar, 2 for half eagle, 2 for eagles, and 8 for double eagles.&nbsp; That&#039;s 160 pair of dies for the year.&nbsp; But the copper nickel coins were only getting a die life of about 15,000 coins per die.&nbsp; So for 1866 they needed 320 pair of dies for the nickel three cent and 983 pairs for the shield nickel!&nbsp; That&#039;s 1300 for the copper nickel coins and 160 for everything else.&nbsp; So they went from have to make around 300 dies a year in 1864, to 2900 dies in 1866.&nbsp; They couldn&#039;t keep up, shortcuts were taken, dies were sent to the presses incompletely basined and the hardening process may have been rushed.&nbsp; And since they were chronically short on dies, they used them as long as they could until they failed completely.&nbsp; It is actually more difficult to find Nickel three cent and shield nickels without cracks than with them.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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