1900 Liberty Nickel Struck On Wrong Planchet

The term 'experts' is quite the misnomer when referring to coinage. A person can cherrypick like a god, and identify all varieties of all denominations, but this can be the result of memorization for profit or limited interest, but is no indication that this same person has the faintest idea of how coins are created.

I am not entirely sold on the notion that such a coin was produced using a planchet intended for exotic foreign coinage.

A coin of this design, with this much wear should weigh 4.8 or 4.9 grams (ideally), but as with other production issues, exact Weight Tolerances of 'non dollar' sized coins were not of paramount importance, and I have little doubt that many over and under weight coins slipped into circulation. The weight disparity on this particular coin 'does' seem to be quite extreme however.

These five cent planchets were not individually hand inspected as were dollar planchets, nor were they weighed on Seyss weighing machines.

Upsetting was mentioned, but should not be an issue as no upsetting was accomplished on this five cent piece. The purpose of the upsetting machine was to thicken the edges of the planchets so that coins with milling or dentils (denticles) would strike up that design (as the combined milling/rim void required a large amount of metal flow) for proper design effect. Milling and the rim are actually one and the same device. Upsetting machines were called 'milling machines' in their earlier days of use because that was their main purpose; to provide extra metal on the planchet where it was needed most (in the milling). Planchets intended for coins without milling or dentils, received no trip to the upsetting machine. I'm drifting off course of the original issue.

I rather think that this coin's affliction 'could' be a simple result of rolling or other draw bench errors. A thin strip resulting in a thin planchet, coupled with an off center strike. I realize that this 'may be' stretching a possibility just a bit, but still within reasonable limitations from a manufacturing standpoint, if the specific gravity test proves to be inconclusive.

Yes, you are obviously correct. I was wrong in this belief. I do not know where I had read this or if maybe I just misinterpreted something.

We aren't saying that a US coin on a foreign planchet can't happen. The problem is finding a likely candidate for the source of the planchet. For example that 1905 V nickel. The Mint WAS striking foreign coins in Philadellphia in 1905, and a possible candidate would be a planchet for the Panama 5 Centisimo. 90% silver 2.5 grams, 18 mm diameter. Weigh is about right, color is right, diameter is a bit small but maybe doable. There are two other possibilities as well but I think the Panama piece is the most likely. The poblem with the originally posted coin is that there just aren't any possible candidates for the planchet source, unless the firm that was supplying some of the cent and nickel planchets at the time was also producing planchets for some other country and one slipped into a US Mint shipment by accident. But without knowing what countries they had contracts with where would you start looking? Also the firm was producing tokens for private businesses, so it could be struck on a token planchet and not a planchet for a foreign country.