I found these while going thru a bunch of proof nickels I picked up and thought they were pretty cool. Are these common on the proof Jefferson nickels? The first one is also rotated slightly.
I thought the first one was scratches initially too but on closer look under a loop they def don't seem to be. They are raised. That's why I tried to take pics from an angle to show this.
The light reflects from the features on the side towards the light source, and they're dark on the back side. That means they're raised, not incuse, meaning die crack. A knife gouge could do the same thing but then, on a Proof, the OP would have plainly seen the gouge as well because there would have been no circulation to flatten it. Pretty cool.
