1870 Shield Nickel For Your Grading Pleasure.

Yes, it's a proof issue. The lines inside the shield, and atop it, are incuse die polishing lines. The broken letter effect is due to extensive die polishing and a heavily basined die. Will post grade later tonight.

These coins stubbornly refused to be nice and mint correctly. From the series' inception through its termination, the Shield nickel simply would not strike well. Longacre tried a lot of things - switching the die location (anvil for hammer) in a two or three year experiment, removing the rays from the design, and experimenting with strike force and pressure, with little or no real success.

In 1870 and going forward the mint began refining the polishing process used on proof dies, resulting in nicer proof strikes with more cameo contrast and less polishing marks, with a much finer grain to the polishing and the abrasive used with the basin wheel/disc. So this coin is from a transition year. Coins in 1871 and later get progressively "cleaner" in Proof, and 1869 and earlier tend to be more like this coin with the artifacts of die preparation clearly visible. The basining was heavy not only to give that mirror eye appeal but also to clean up the issues caused by the striking difficulties, such as die cracks, clash marks, etc. As striking difficulties were worked on, less and less "makeup" had to be done to get acceptable Proofs.

PR-64.

Nice