I bought a roll of Buffalo nickels on eBay and was just photographing and inventorying them and came across this 1935 nickel that it looks like someone may have removed the mint mark from. Why would someone do this? According to my reference material, a "P" is not worth more than a "D" or an "S", so why lower the value by trying to make it into a "P"?
Well they didn't they simply surgically removed a mm to attach to another coin. The problem is there are mint mark styles, so if they were trying to doctor a coin perhaps they weren't smart enough to pick the correct style.
Or they were hoping whoever they foisted their forgery upon didn't know there were different mm styles.
While it is correct that there are different styles, IMHO 90% of dealers and collectors who are not "into" varieties don't know what they are. This does not look like a lamination. It is more likely that this was a practice coin (adding the mintmark). I have two coins with the "added mintmark" removed in my collection and this is what they look like. A more magnified image would help to confirm added & removed or just removed.