Hello fellow coiners. I wound up with this 1867 Sheild nickel today along with some 2 and 3 cent pieces my local guy had put together for me. So I get home to look more closely at it and I think the technical term for what I see is " All Messed Up". I could be wrong on that though...lol...so there are just die cracks all over the place. I believe the real term is "Retained Broken Die". Am I correct? Cracks show on both the obv. and rev. Also appears to be struck through grease possibly at the N in CENTS? Do these errors on an older coin like this make it more or less desireable? Im not as experienced with the older stuff. Any comments or help is appreciated!!! Thanks yall!!
It took the mint a little while before they figured out how to strike the new nickel alloy, so many shield nickels and 3CN have die cracks. IMO, yours doesn't affect value either way The N appears to be a filled die, as you said above
Shields never cease to amaze me! There are still more varieties un attributed then any that have been discovered or found. A fun series to collect....if you like varieties,and discovering new finds.
Mostly they are just die cracks but it does appear to have a retained internal die break below the R in TRUST. The shield nickels are treasure trove for variety collectors because as mentioned there are still many more varieties to be discovered. Some of the dates had close to a thousand die pairs of which only a relatively small number have been identified. And as mentioned there are a LOT of die cracks in the series. It is more difficult to find one without cracks than with them.
Cool!!! The shield nickels are just one of those series Ive just had very very few of over the years and wasnt as interested in varieties when I did so I had no idea about the die issues incurred with the development of that series. Makes total sense though with nickel being the hard metal that it is. Thats why I come to yall with all my problems!!! Now if I could just get my mother in law and wife figured out Id be golden!!!! Hahaha Thanks gents
From one Irishman to another concerning your closing sentence ...if we had that answer we be two very wealthy guys. That's like trying to guess the next power ball numbers one in a trillion chance of figuring that out.
