1978-D Nickel, Worst DDD I Have Yet Seen.

Yikes that die had been ready for retirement for some time before striking this nickel. Thx for showing the two die states as those comparisons make the differences more clear.

The years either side of 1982 produced some spectacular VLDS examples. However, die chips were less common then than now. That tells me the mint was not hardening dies as much back then. Rather than chip, the relatively softer dies would soften and smear.

Nick, I had been thinking the same thing. That die steel had to be pretty soft to stretch like that. On a hardened and therefore slightly brittle steel die, some of those devices would have forked off cracks. Certainly the walls between letters wouldn't have held indefinitely before just cracking off.

On a current generation nickel (2096-2023), even a little hornets nest can fire off a crack towards the rim. I have seen chips in curved letters start cracks, and even the perpetual tiny chip between Monticello and FS will start die cracks.

Thanks, frog. =)

I have been trying a new image technique for the last few days. My original method was to set my iPad to square photo, zoom 1.7x until the magnifier filled the screen, snap a picture, then resize to 800x800 in an app, then final crop. I felt that the digital zoom and then resize might be blurring the photos somewhat.

Now I am taking forum pictures at 1x, no digital zoom. That results in a photo that is mostly black border. I do a tight crop to the magnifier lens. Usually it fits in the 300 kB limit with no resize or resolution tampering. I think the result is a clearer image. Will probably post this to the testing and then coin photography forum with some comparison images of technique.

For Nickels maybe but the worst of the worsts was 1976 Quarters Denver strike.