Buffalo Nickel Struck Through A Die Cap?

Wow!! This one cool coin and I'm surprised you found it in a "Bargain Bin"!

nic-a-date? he he he he

The horizontal striations (roughly northwest to southeast) tend to indicate some post-mint cataclysm, but the rim is in far better condition than such would indicate.

I'd expect more features of a brockage on the obverse had it been struck through a capped die, though. One can't expect a whole bunch of strikes from a capped die, so the detail transfer should not only survive some circulation but prohibit this much obverse detail to remain.

What's left are, to me, a couple of possibilities. The first, remote one, is that some sort of flat, thin foreign object got caught up in the strike. Highly unlikely. The second is a major-league Grease Fill, hard as it is to imagine such coverage. Remember, with Buffalos the reverse was the hammer die.

A planchet irregularity in dimension wouldn't allow so much reverse detail to survive along with so little of the obverse. I will say I'm interested in the "doubling" of the rim on the "west" side of the reverse, as a possible piece of evidence.

I'm going to dash off an email to someone who might have a clearer opinion.

The weight on the postage scale was 0.2