Is This 1939 Jefferson A Double Monticello?

to the Community!

Good luck!

In the past two years, I have searched over 40000 nickels. About half of those were examined under 10x magnification (far more if you include the way that the iPad screen increases the image size). At this point, I'm pretty confident in my ability to call DDD and MD on Jefferson nickels. That is not to say that it's impossible that your coin is a minor doubled die—some DDO and DDR present similar to MD—but 1939 nickels have been scrutinized for decades and new finds are not probable.

Since you examined 250 nickels, the first question I would ask is what years were the coins? Machine Doubling is a result of minting technology. The machinery changes periodically at the mint, resulting in different appearances to MD. The same is true of Die Deterioration. Some years the Mint appears to have been conscientious in pulling old dies. Other years, particularly 1954-1964 and 1980-1990, they ran the striking dies straight into the grave.



That is unfortunately going to be the case at the vast majority of coin shops. Variety coins are a specialized niche. You can find helpful people on forums like CCF and CONECA, but the odds of them being geographically nearby are slim.

Specifically to the question about grading, it is almost never to your financial advantage to get a minor variety graded. You grade mostly for preservation, registry sets, insurance, or sale. That probably goes 10x for circulated coins.

Bummer.

You have come to the right place.

Figured that on the coin shop. And as Brand explained it has to be a very good error or variety to warrant the cost of slabbing.