Interesting Nickel

Swamperbob, thanks. According to my 12" ruler, using 16ths It fits. But who is the GOD of the Coin World that says your right? Does this have to be sent off to a grading company and at fifty $ a coin is it worth it since as now I have no intention of selling any of my coins?

For anyone following this thread - Frank sent the coin in question to me for inspection. Here is the letter I sent to him today.

The 1998 Jefferson arrived safely. It is beyond almost all doubt a "Struck Through Rim Burr" where the piece of metal has largely dislodged from the original surface. This is a class III-K-8 error according to the PDS classification system.

I say "probably" only because of the presence of a pair of very oddly positioned marks on the edge of this coin. I will cover that later.

My review shows all of the features of a "Strike Through" - the distortions of the depression, the lack of evidence of tooling or an impact, absence of flow lines within the "hole" and the size and shape of the "hole" itself all conform to other similar coins I have examined. There is actually a smaller second shard of metal that was retained and can be seen between the "hole" and the edge of the coin. That second strike though involves a very tiny sliver of metal possibly a piece of the edge of the larger burr that was cut from the rim. This feature I only noted when I rotated the coin under high magnification. The second burr was thicker than a human hair but not by too much. This second sliver runs through the letter Y in LIBERTY and is not a "cut in" post-strike feature. I also noted that above the R in LIBERTY the burr remained attached to the planchet and that there is a small piece of the burr still remaining. The missing part of the sliver appears to have been broken away at the point above the R near the edge. This may have happened in the ejection process or at any point before you found it.

The edge of the coin where the burr originated has been sheared perpendicularly to the coin face and is fully consistent with the planchet being damaged by the edge of the rising collar die just before the planchet became fully centered in the coining chamber.

Above I noted the presence of two oddly positioned rim "nicks". They are located at about 180 degrees apart and in a plane that bisects the burr. There is a slight (only slight) possibility that these two contact marks - one round and one resembling a knife edge cut could be traces of a device used to hold (or clamp) the coin rigidly in place while being tooled. That said, I was initially very suspicious, BUT after a full microscopic examination, my opinion is that this is actual striking damage and NOT AN ELABORATE HOAX. I believe the marks on the rim can be assigned to miscellaneous post strike damage caused by the coin dropping into the coin hopper.

At times, error collectors have been known to manufacture clever forgeries to fool authenticators. If that is the case here - I would love to meet the party or parties responsible because they have essentially produced a PERFECT example of a Non-Retained Struck Through Rim Burr.

The coin has a value estimated at $1 to $2 over the value of the coin itself. It is considered a rarity level 3-5 which is defined as Scarce to Rare From 100,000 to 100 pieces. For the particulars on the PDS classification system and values attached see - Krause Publications "2007 North American Coin Prices" by David C. Harper, Editor, pages 117 and 131.

Bryan1315 - I was not offended by the comment because as I understood it - it was a general inquiry into "who decides". It was more of a general comment about the confusion that often exists when more that one "expert" weighs in on a coin. I think it is just an indication of the frustration that all of us feel at one time or another when we get into areas where we are not comfortable.

Thanks you for the supportive comment however. We all need to treat each other as well as possible because life is all too short.

Like I said I wasn't sure about the comment and wasn't sure how it was meant to be taken, that is why I said if it was meant the way I was reading it that the comments that followed is how I felt. I am sorry if I misunderstood but I wasn't coming down on anyone just trying to state my opinion if the statement was meant in a harsh way, the way I was reading it

stmpcol - just thought you should see another example of a Struck through (RETAINED) Rim Burr. When your coin came up I did a search on ebay and found this one. I decided to bid on it on a lark. It falls in the identical class as the nickel and shows that this kind of an error has happened for a long time.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...190031185196

The auction presents an anomaly associated with some "errors". Notice the final bid price. Even with shipping the price I paid is UNDER what I would consider the actual retail of this coin without the error. The coin is NOT DAMAGED - the damage to the planchet happened BEFORE the strike. The coin surfaces are very nice in person.

I think the problem here is that most bidders looked at this as a "damaged" coin and they didn't bid.

stmpcol - apparently most bidders had the same opinion - which was great for me.

The coin is NOT rotated.

Whenever I bid on ebay I NEVER make assumptions (or I try not to). If I would be willing to adjust my bid to include a feature not 100% certain from the scans I ask questions.

Better same than sorry.