1957 D Jefferson Nickel Line Above The Mint Mark?

Here is an example of "Ghosting" on a 1947-S Lincoln Cent or what the late Alan Herbert coined Internal Metal Displacement Phenomenon or Heavy Die transfer. The description can be found in the CONECA Glossary of Error-Variety Terms (http://conecaonline.org/content/glossary.html)as follows:

"Heavy die transfer - When a die nears the end of its usefulness, often it exhibits the major central design of its opposing mate. This design is transferred from one die to the other through the striking of the coin metal. Alan Herbert gives this illustration: "The best example I can offer of this phenomenon is the toy which you've all seen which has five or six metal balls hanging in a row, touching each other. When you pull back the end ball and allow it to strike the row, it causes the ball at the far end to swing away from its neighbor. The same thing occurs with design transfer, the outline of the design being transferred from one die to the other." (Alan Herbert, Minting Varieties and Errors, fifth edition, New York: House of Collectibles, 1991, page 158). This variety is fairly common on the early wheat cents. It is often called the "ghost of Lincoln." The technical term for this is IMPD (Internal Metal Displacement Phenomenon)."

The wheat cents design are not strong enough to create this. It is usually the bust that creates this. But we might watch for the Shield cents to see if it tranfers there. The dies are rotated to the opposite position that was used before. (now the obverse is the anvil die and the reverse is now the hammer die) So looking for these on the obverse is where we should be looking now. (same for MAD coins now also)

I have a few lincoln cents with PIDT on obverse. You can see the outline of the memorial building from reverse there.

Thanks for that overlay supplement, Coop. My only guess is that this PIDT is limited to one die set to this particular year and mint. I have a a few of these 87-Ds but not on other years. The die was just getting really tired. The area where the upper right arrow points to is extremely worn and about ready to crumble or break away.

No, a coin exhibiting late stage die wear should not be considered an error as the Mint routinely tries to get as many strikes as is practical from a die pair. Most dies will strike a few hundred thousand coins before retirement and tens of thousands of those coins will be LDS/VLDS. Multiply that by the several thousand die pairs used during an annual mintage run and you can see that LDS/VLDS coins are quite common.

It was the first nickel one I've seen posted. So I just had to keep those images.

The nickel planchet is certainly thicker, but not necessarily harder! The Rockwell 15T Hardness for Cupronickel is a range of 60-69, and for Copper-plated Zinc the range is 62-72. The cent planchet is slightly harder! I have not found this same information for pre 1982 cents, so they could be softer!

Perhaps there is something wrong about the way I am looking at this information, so I am willing to be corrected!