JKK

It's an S, for San Francisco, and the S mint mark normally looks that way.

Then send it in for grading, macho man, and let's see what the services say.

It's PMV: post-mint vandalism.

The problem with that is if the thread gets longer, no one wants to keep scrolling all the way up to pick out which coin they're talking about. People like me, who have very quick 'don't bother' thresholds, simply close it and let someone else deal with it. So you get more help, more quickly, if you create separate threads. Also, your wife's right. Truth with the bark on: You're about to learn that a lot of what you think are valuable errors are just damaged or defective (in ways that add no value). You will have achieved a great deal if you find a single piece worth $10. So instead of thinking this might be the coin that hits the big one, think none of them are worth more than face, and seek to learn how to eliminate damaged and defective coins from your consideration. Trust us: If you have one that's really a valuable error, we will say so. It gets really fatiguing breaking the news to people that their coins aren't special, and someone with their hopes way up makes it harder. But go ahead and post them by all means; the clearer and sharper the photos, the easier it will be to explain why if there were that much free money rolling around in the currency system, more people would be doing this. You'll learn what is and what isn't.

The Guati and damaged Soviet pieces seem irrelevant to the topic at hand. What do they have to do with US nickels?

Doubt it, but it's a nice find.

With sending stuff in for professional grading, my counsel is to ask yourself what is the desired result. Broadly speaking, is it profit or hobby? If it's profit, you have to think you're increasing its value by $60 or more, or that its value is worth confirming. Obviously, if the coin is only worth a fraction of the grading cost, the profit motive is probably mistaken. If it's hobby, there could be many reasons: you're doing a fully slabbed collection, you just want to be sure it's real or a certain variety, you are assembling a registry set, your grandfather gave it to you and you like it, whatever. All hobby reasons are valid because they don't require the math to work out to a financial benefit.

While one doesn't grade with magnification--at least not up to MS or PF-68--one does authenticate and assess cleaning with it. One major tell is when the coin is too bright for its level of wear, especially when it's the same on the worn parts and the protected areas. Another is tiny scratches, either horizontal (handheld wire brush side to side) or circular (dremel tool rotary wire brush). Mag can also show areas of dip residue, for example. I hit it with a 60x coin microscope and can usually tell when it's been whizzed. Also a good tool for spotting varieties.

If a post's title is of no interest, anyone with any maturity will just pass it by. Not everyone here is that mature. We have at least one person, around whom their world absolutely revolves, who finds it necessary to post to tell people they are not interested in the poster's coin or question. As the millennials used to say, totes brills. But that's not malice, just narcissism. The smart way to title the post is to summarize the coin and the question. "1880 Liberty dollar grade and value" is beautiful, for example, because that's what a novice might be able to tell about an 1880 Morgan. Whether they called it a Morgan, or even knew of the possibility of a mint mark, is beside the point because the information is enough for people to decide whether to look--and they can post to clarify the coin's attribution when they offer a grade and value estimate. Sometimes it's hard to know that much. I'm mainly into ancients and Islamic world stuff, and I don't scoff at someone who posts a jital and says "can't identify Arab coin." (Jitals mostly contain some Arabic -script but are from the region of Afghanistan, which is not Arabic-speaking.) Or someone who's got a common worn fourth-century ant of Constantius (good for me as a sleep aid; if I see one more I'll become narcoleptic) and titles it "Ancient Greek coin." People mislabel tokens as coins all the time in titles. If people would use their brains, they'd see that the poster in those cases is trying their best with what they can see. Of course they have no f-bombing idea it's not Greek. That's why they asked! And it takes some guts to risk being wrong. So those are never a downside, at least in my mind. They tried. Add something about what they want, such as "please identify" or "worth much?" and the title is golden. The dumb way is to just say N000Bzz PLZ HELP as the title, or something else that tells us very little except that their writing is probably agonizing to make out. That tells us we are dealing with someone who does not bother to see the world from our perspective, raising the question whether we should bother with them (some Good Samarican always will). They'll probably post one of the famous forty-line paras with no punctuation. They'll nearly always have pareidolia (fancy word for wishful thinking; wishful vision, if you will). They'll argue with us, threaten to have it graded and prove us wrong (that'll fix our little red wagons). They write like children and they behave like children, but get angry when treated like children. Some even bring race into it, as if we had any idea whether they were white, black, Asian, Hispanic, or blue with pink dots. Or cared. Basically, what do you think you have, and what do you want to know. "1964D Lincoln DDO?" is fine, because at least that means when we answer to tell them that it's just mechanical doubling, and that when you post a pic of the reverse the term would be 'DDR' if that were in play, we knew what it was about and had a question to answer.

Posts don't have to contain questions. However, if you post a coin without a question, and no one comments--which would be pretty normal with parking lot damaged modern stuff--that would be because those who looked at it didn't think you needed any input. Speaking just for me, if I were to see your original post in the feed, I'd say: "Reeded edge. Dime. Means nothing to me." But that wouldn't mean you did anything wrong, just that it doesn't fit my personal interests. Now, if you posted one like that, and twenty minutes later posted again ragging on us for not giving you an instant reply, that'd be different. But you did not do that. You'd be amazed how many people think they can just post a pic with no explanation, and that we'll all look at it immediately and then use our psychic powers to divine what the poster wants to know. I just block people who do that, as I just block anyone who in my view is an insufficiently_considerate_or_intelligent_person.

Damn. We know how it is out here when orchards get messed up. All that stuff sounds excellent. Looking forward to seeing your coin and whether I can be of help.

Be that as it may, I can attest to the fact that Mississippi pear butter is excellent on cornbread. Thanks again. And for the record, I'm not sure how it would be possible to put too many cloves in it. Cloves = deliciousness.

A nickel can easily be MS without full steps. A bag mark could interrupt one of the steps, or more commonly the last two never struck up to begin with.

My opinion is that the coin is worth one cent or its metal value, that no digging into its date is worth anyone's energy, and that even roll hunting would be more profitable than examining this one.

I bet. One can only imagine what it was like there before the advent of a/c.

Fine, thanks, not as hot today as recently. How's the summer in Hattiesburg?

The people who get laughed at or scorned don't get that for asking questions, even if they aren't real great questions. They get disrespected because they are obtuse, or slow in the uptake, or foolishly insist on conclusions proven incorrect by people who know more than they do.

Who cares why? Not saying this to be rude to you, of course, just being very candid and offering some critical thought. When someone comes here to waste our time and demand confirmation of their pareidolia, I don't care if they did it because they had a nosebleed, found a parking lot nickel, or saw something on allwetsy and decided they could get rich. I don't care and I don't see why anyone does. Once they prove this, why waste time trying to convince them? Who benefits? Not them. Not us. Not NGC. No one. They should be put on ignore posts and left to scream into the void. If you actually do care on reflection, for real and for true, then that's a personal decision and not for me to critique. I might not understand it, but I don't have to understand, and I accept that. But if we really don't care, let's show it. And I'm proposing that after a certain point, we should seriously consider ceasing to care. Or rather, I've already stopped caring and I hope others will join me in apathy. There are other people worth bothering with who are not pareidoliacs. I see nothing gained by taking attention and teaching from them and giving it to ingrates. This board wastes so vulgar_term_for_copulation_in_present_participle much time on ingrates, it's the functional equivalent of giving drug addicts free money.

Sometimes being on this forum feels like being one of the old guys working in a mill. Someone new shows up to clean up around one of the planers, and immediately stands in a spot where they throw the broken boards off. Old guy says, hey, not a good place to stand, good place to get clocked in the head with a flying board. New guy says nah, I know what I'm doing. No, really, says old guy, this could get you seriously hurt, that's why we don't stand there. New guy looks at old guy, basically hints that he's an old fogey who doesn't get it, and decides to stick around. Old guy says, okay, when you get hit in the head and your memory comes back, hope it includes that we tried to tell you not to stand there, and that the only way you would learn is by getting hit. Then he walks away. We're like if the old guy stood there and kept after the very_unwise_planer_handyman_novice for half an hour pleading with him to save his own braincase from impact, and the VUPHN insists on showing the level of wisdom that is probably a result of many other past kindly meant guidances ignored about where to stand. I would rather we all walked away sooner. Once three people have told someone it's nothing, and they still insist, let's just tell them to send it in without remorse. Some already do say that. There's no point debating with someone whose mind is made up to be wrong and only wants their decision confirmed. They hear only what confirms.

Even if that conformed to the design of a Trade Dollar, which it doesn't, it not sticking to a magnet would not mean it was genuine. That only means that a small metal disk (that might not even be a coin) is not made of enough iron/nickel to be attracted to a magnet. In other words, that rules out one of the cheaper, crappier forms of fake. It by no means indicates authenticity. It's like if the police suspect someone of involvement in a crime. If when checking into that person, they happen to have been dead before the crime was conceived, yeah, pretty sure that dead person is innocent. But if they happen to be alive, that doesn't mean they're guilty, It just rules out one of the most obvious causes of not-guiltiness.

When you do, consider it tuition.

Worth 1c each.

It only takes one sucker to make someone's day.

You're not learning. I recommend learning. Repeated misidentification posting will not by itself change the outcome; it will just make you look like a slow learner.

Well, thanks for having the honesty to admit that you are contributing to the problem and damaging the hobby.