Extreme Lamination Holes Or PMD?

I'm not thinking PMD -- the holes are all in lines like striations. I'm thinking faulty metal mixture somehow, IMHO.

It is PMD, I have found a few of these nickels when I metal detect. In some areas the soil is acidic enough to do this to nickels as well as other coins. Definitely not a manufacturing problem!

The first coin looks really cool - you can see the striated structure of the metal in the planchet. But the pitting and discoloration indicate the coins have been subjected to severe PMD (environmental / acid damage). Return them to the seller & get your money back if you can.

Hi robmck

There used to be a process called "patenation", if I recall correctly, in which underground alkalyne salts and cyanides would dissolve certain minerals from ground ore, leaving other minerals behind and looking rather "spongely"-looking, similar to your coins. Gold and copper were often recovered in this manner dating from the time of the romans to as late as the 1600's, as these very porous ores ended up containing a much-higher grade of base metal, especially desirable in the days when refining techniques were not as good as we have today. If your coins have been buried at some time or exposed to certain environmental damage, then that might leave those unexplained holes. True, I may be wrong (won't be the first time!), but the reason I lean toward any explanation along these lines is that the holes in your coins don't look like any man-made/road rash/shop project gone wrong type of a deal. Notice how the holes are very organic-looking, as if the missing material was leached away naturally as opposed to being forcibly removed by some other method. I believe chwkboy and Scissel are correct when they say acidic/environmental damage, but I do believe that the metal was not mixed properly prior to the minting process, causing the striations, or else you would have holes in just random spots and blotches on the coin and would tend to see more surface damage. At any rate I would keep the coins, if for no other reason than they are rather neat-looking! Sweet find for the price you paid!

Hi pennyman

Yeah, I always thought that the nickels were 100% nickel too, so I hear what you're saying. I just couldn't figure out what else would cause those marks to be like that. I agree an acid or some such thing was the cause of it, but I don't know how pure "100%" actually was back then. I've got some nice "woody" pennies, which actually are an alloy, but didn't know if the same fluctuation of nickel could take place or not. I wish I had one, it looks pretty cool.

great conversation piece these turned out to be...nickels from space!! that's awesome!

so the acidic environmental conditions comment sounds very plausible. and I agree that the way the metal is eaten away is very organic in some regards but is also inorganic in the way the striations run in the same direction. and the nickels being buried would probably explain the darker colour and the fact that there were three like this in a group. each of the 3 showed a different amount of progression in the amount of missing metal.

if there was an impurity in the nickel, it would stand to reason that when they rolled the nickel into sheets, it would have been rolled in one direction which would have stretched the impurity into the striations.

so the question is...if you buried 100 George V nickels in the right soil, would they all deteriorate in a similar fashion? or would only a few with impurities show the deterioration?

looks similar to mine

Where did you get that? Sweet coin!