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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;leothelion, post: 24739960, member: 10198&quot;]Great article for the collector seeking the ultimate collector&#039;s coin with the very earliest die state strike from the very first pairing of working hubs and dies! I have given a great deal of thought to the details/design features of the Jefferson nickel, 33+ years but from what I have jotted down pales miserably to what I just read here.</p><p>I&#039;ve been seeking a single word that describes the metal movement while stamping a coin blank. For example, a Jefferson nickel with an overall mushy strike, yet the steps are in full detail. Where the high points of a working hub get hammered out but yet the step area remains unaffected and eventually they will start to fill in with the metal that was meant for all those once sharp details; deep hairlines, top of windows, square top digits, and letters and so on. It&#039;s like, the step area in the die acts/functions as a reservoir to take up the metal that was meant for all those hammered-out details to prevent a die from cracking.</p><p>Words that I have used over the years to describe this effect; phenomenon, lopsided, displacement of, transference and the more comical terms, the boomerrang or the ballooning effect where as when one area of a coin deflates, an other will inflate.</p><p>Coin that have a poor, flawed, mushy strike yet have 5 to 6 steps, I have termed such coins as having compensated steps. Steps that had help forming due to the wearing down of other devices in the die.</p><p>Also, I believe, poorly struck coins tend to grade higher due to the higher compaction of the metal/planchet when the dies lack the details for the metal to flow into. The volume of the coin blank and the chamber remain the same for every strike of a coin so when the metal has no place to go, the blank is subjected to higher coining pressure resulting in higher compaction. The metal doesn&#039;t simply vanish as the details slowly fade during the life of a die. This higher compaction makes/increases the hardness of the surfaces of the coin preventing the coin from getting easily nicked up by other coins. Also a reason for reducing the coining pressure to strike the remaining production of coins, is to safeguard the dies from cracking.</p><p>Also, the lack of higher points/sharp details on a coin are not there to receive/take on a nick/hit from another coin in a coin hopper. The surfaces on a flawed strike are smoother, compacted, and tend to grade higher more consistently than a coin with a VEDS strike.</p><p>A coin with complete details on both sides is a far more desirable coin than a flawed coin with compensated steps.</p><p><span style="color: #ff4d4d">edited </span></p><p><br /></p><p>Leo[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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