2 Headed Nickel Mint Assisted ?

Strangest thing I have seen.
MS65 means that they are considering the terrible condition of that coin to be "as minted". So the question begs an answer- why would that a coin struck with two obverse dies be damaged in such a way? I suspect foul play as well.
I have a crazy theory about how this COULD have happened genuine. I am not 100% that this is possible, but I will present it.
A coin is pressed and sticks to the obverse die, a second planchet is fed in and the first coin comes loose and flips over on top of it. The hammer die comes down and strikes the coin again on the other side, and the two stick in the bottom. A third planchet enters and is pressed on top of the pile. The result - see above.
Now I understand that the minting is so fast that it would hardly be possible for a coin to flip over, but it is the best I could come up with...

Struck coin sticks to reverse die. New planchet is squashed between obverse die and obverse of stuck coin.

westernsky - It's easy to diss this, but put another hat on - can you conceive of a rational explanation?

99% of the time the PCGS number on counterfeit slabs is legit. Just because they're counterfeiters doesn't make them dumb.

Very interesting--thanks for posting. I wonder how a struck coin (as opposed to a die) could create such sharp edges to the letters and make them facing the right way and in relief?

From the way it looks it was struck between two hammer dies. The necks on the hammer dies are shorter than those on the anvil dies. This means that at the bottom of the stroke the two dies were just barely close enough together to create part of the design on the coin, and the typical surface marks on the planchet were not wiped out. (That's whey it looks rough and beat up.) Also the coin would not be able to be ejected from the collar because the short necked hammer in the anvil die position would be unable to push the coin up and out of the collar. The press would have to be shut down and the collar removed in order to get this coin out. This almost certainly had to be employee assisted. (If it was struck between two anvil dies the die faces would be closer together than normal and the strike would be very sharp, but their would not be enough clearance after the strike for the feed finger to push the coin away, and it might even be trapped between the two dies after the lower dies rises up to push it out of the collar. It would be possible to remove it though without disassembling the press by slowly rotating the press though a cycle by hand until the lower die is CLOSE to the top of its travel and then forcing down the collar. Would still take manual assistance to remove the coin from the collar.)



Nope. After the three strikes that you describe the bottom coin would have a normal rev and an incuse obverse. The middle coin would have a normal obverse and the reverse would have two images, a raise obverse over a raised but flattened reverse, and the third coin would have an incuse obverse/reverse and a raised and normal obverse. None of which would look like the OP coin.



Result would be a full brockage with a raised and normal obverse and an incuse and reversed obv.



Not sure what you are describing but I don't see how a "reversed die cap" could result in the OP coin.



Most of the marks you are seeing are the original planchet surface. You need to look for wear and marks on those areas that WERE struck up. If contact marks in those areas are minimal a 65 grade may be justified.

I've heard of "flip-over" double strikes, but in that case, you should see the reverse at least partially represented somewhere on the coin. I'm with the dual coin strike theory, somehow...

Definitely mint assisted for sure.