Can someone explain these lines?If you examine this shield nickel you'll see sets of lines beginning in the leaf clusters on the right obv. and if you follow them you'll notice that they run through the shield. If you connect the dot they go across the shield.
They look like gouges of some sort, possibly from a tool. The only tool I'm familiar with that could make parallel marks like that is one that plasterers use to scrape the base coat of mud for a top coat of stucco. Strange! Chris
Toll marks were my first thought as well. But after looking, flipping and forth, and looking some more I wonder. The width, depth, and spacing of the marks seems to be exactly the same as the shield lines themselves. Coincidences like that, tend to make me think, to wonder. It would be unusual to say the least, but I'm wondering if maybe this coin is a over-strike. In other words a planchet was previous struck, the resulting coin was found to be unacceptable, and was thrown back into the planchet pile somehow. Only to be struck again. And the lines we see on this coin are the remnants of the shield lines from the original coin that were not obliterated by the second striking. Food for thought.
Now I have a theory or two. I have found another shield nickel on e bay while surfing that has the same lines on the reverse . Spaced about the same around the five. I should have marked it as I was at work , had to take a call , logged off and now l can find it. My first theory is it was done by a mint employee on purpose . Do you think it was on anyone's mind in 1867 that today some 140 years later people would be trying to guess what happened that day at the mint. I was thinking that because of the alloy hardness and how only 10-12,000 coins were struck on each die that those lines were cancel lines. To take that die out of service . Put there on purpose to cancel the die. Now the 1867 nickel had one of the highest mintage's. The 1867 no ray 28,890,500 to be exact . That was the highest of all shields produced. Now since at this time reconstruction post civil war was going on ,coinage was needed to fuel commerce. So let's say each die averaged 11 thousand pieces production. If you divide 28,890,500 by 11,000 you would need no less than 2,626 dies to mint that total . I think the mint had canceled the die then needed more dies to produce. Then cleaned up the die re polished it and could not polish it so no evidence of the cancellation took place. Plus again they were on a production schedule. More or less get it done. Again just a theory as I'm not sure what happened but it sure makes you think outside the box for an answer .
I had a similar thought but I had the coin being struck twice and rotating in the striking chamber between the first and second strike. But IF that were case you should see some evidence of the second strike on the reverse of the coin.
What about the broken lines in the argent? You can see the lines bits and pieces in the gules. Do you think that the thickness of the Gules stopped the full transfer to the lower areas of the Paleways? I also imaged the nickel printed the image and using a rule connected the lines. They run close but not true to the same angle. Meaning that if the coin was re struck one would think that the all the lines would run true at the same angles . Maybe I should post a copy of that full image. Should I send this specimen in for variety?
Doug looking at the thickness of the Gules and comparing that to the mystery lines they do have the same thickness and shape.
My 1867 (with Rays) was slabbed by NGC as a mint error due to die cracks. The mint really struggled with the shield nickel -- the alloy was harder than what they were used to using and the coin was slightly too thick for its weight. That meant the dies wore out sooner, leading to numerous minor varieties. This continued even after the rays were removed. I suspect your coin is from one of the less carefully prepared dies.
In the old days Dies were generally used until they literally fell apart, as evidenced by numerous Die Cracks, Die Breaks, and Cuds seen more frequently in certain series. If there was significant clashing, or a small Die Break at the edge of a Detail, the Mint might take a coarse file to the Die Face in an attempt to remove some metal and restore the Die to "good" service. I believe the tapering of some of the Lines is due to the initial contact with, or lifting of the file from, the Die Face during the stroke. Could this Die have been once "retired" and defaced using a file like the OPs theory--and then put back into service? Yes, possibly. If that were the case I would expect to see a much more shallow Relief across all of the Obverse due to that much metal removal.
Again I'm open to all thoughts on this. Doug theory does makes sense . Would love to get as many views as possible just to see is it worth to summit it, or just enjoy the fact that this coin has some unsolved history . You can bet that I'll be cherry pickin shield nickels till I find another oddly .
really interesting, and I don't have anything to add to the ideas already presented. For a series that is often looked upon as an orphan, there is a lot of fascinating stuff going on in shield nickels.
What I find most interesting about this coin is how these marks seem to match details on the coin and cross what would be high-points on the die. In other words, if the final coin were an overstrike, we should expect to see design details of the prior strike preserved in the low points of the die--or high points on the coin. But here, we see marks that should have been obliterated by the second strike. For this reason, I suspect the marks were on the die itself--finding a match on another coin would be confirmation here. I do know in the IHC series there are several cases of off-center design details transferred to the die--the mechanism isn't fully understood. Pure speculation here--but perhaps they tapped the annealed die blank with the hub to check its softness prior to hubbing, and some of these marks were preserved?
This isn't listed in the "Cherrypicker's Guide". There have been posters here in the past that have found varieties that were submitted to "Cherrypickers" and got credit in the book for the find. I couldn't find anything in the book about how to submit a coin for examination but if I had your coin I'd be interested in sharing the find. Maybe it would rate being a $$$ variety.
Upon a closer look at the lines, it appears that the upper two extend all the way from the center left side of the leftmost "column" to the outer of the two berries on the right side leaves, This length is far longer than any element of the design and therefore it's unlikely that the marks were part of a reworked die.
