JKK

I doubt anyone who found the original joke obscure would gain any more from that, and would probably take it as confirmation that one was being made sport of, but I accept that you didn't intend that.
In case it wasn't very clear, I was not speaking to any one person so much as to the general group. This board has a habit of confusing native speakers' willful semiliteracy (in which they will still understand jokes even if they sound dumber than a bag of wet nickels) with non-native speakers' forlorn attempts to make sense of native speakers' sentence fragments, slang, and other natural colloquialisms. It's been going on for years and might decrease if people begin to see the world through someone else's eyes. I've seen it so very many times.
Basic question in broken English. Receives wiseacre one-liner from someone impressed with himself. Decides is being mocked and gets defensive. Makes self target in process. Now gets a hailstorm of smart remarks mixed with some "calm down, take a joke" advisements. If we were as considerate about ESL speakers' English as we would like them to be if we were trying to be understood in their native languages, none of the negativity needs to arise. We can save that for the donkeys who post parking lot coins, get patient guidance, reject it, and fight with people demanding confirmation of their errors. Or the ones who claim racism when it's obvious no one knows what color they are until they reveal it. These are patterns one sees here over years and they repeat themselves. I'm encouraging people to break some of the more toxic ones. Message boards that let toxic patterns flourish become virtual street gangs bullying anyone who wanders into their turf just because they can. I've seen signs of that here at times and I think we have smart enough people here (and those who aren't too smart are at least generally kind-hearted) to reflect and adjust if they choose. No one's really brought it up. Okay, I brought it up. People can now do as they will do.
Maybe, too, having taken studied seven spoken foreign languages in my life and volunteering as an ESL classroom aide, I have more empathy than others for that guy right there. Fair enough--but I would like to see that empathy spread a little.

Appreciated. In that case the fine point resolves to, if it's apparent that our English (including your perfectly fluent collegiate English, which shows no signs of ESL at all) kidding flies over someone's head, let us work to be as considerate as we can in that regard. We will be a better group for it.

I doubt anyone who found the original joke obscure would gain any more from that, and would probably take it as confirmation that one was being made sport of, but I accept that you didn't intend that.
In case it wasn't very clear, I was not speaking to any one person so much as to the general group. This board has a habit of confusing native speakers' willful semiliteracy (in which they will still understand jokes even if they sound dumber than a bag of wet nickels) with non-native speakers' forlorn attempts to make sense of native speakers' sentence fragments, slang, and other natural colloquialisms. It's been going on for years and might decrease if people begin to see the world through someone else's eyes. I've seen it so very many times.
Basic question in broken English. Receives wiseacre one-liner from someone impressed with himself. Decides is being mocked and gets defensive. Makes self target in process. Now gets a hailstorm of smart remarks mixed with some "calm down, take a joke" advisements. If we were as considerate about ESL speakers' English as we would like them to be if we were trying to be understood in their native languages, none of the negativity needs to arise. We can save that for the donkeys who post parking lot coins, get patient guidance, reject it, and fight with people demanding confirmation of their errors. Or the ones who claim racism when it's obvious no one knows what color they are until they reveal it. These are patterns one sees here over years and they repeat themselves. I'm encouraging people to break some of the more toxic ones. Message boards that let toxic patterns flourish become virtual street gangs bullying anyone who wanders into their turf just because they can. I've seen signs of that here at times and I think we have smart enough people here (and those who aren't too smart are at least generally kind-hearted) to reflect and adjust if they choose. No one's really brought it up. Okay, I brought it up. People can now do as they will do.
Maybe, too, having taken studied seven spoken foreign languages in my life and volunteering as an ESL classroom aide, I have more empathy than others for that guy right there. Fair enough--but I would like to see that empathy spread a little.

Pretty sure the OP is writing in English as a second language, and it's easy for fairly dopey jokes to sail past and even look like deliberate mockery. I am not sure why that hasn't occurred to anyone here, but it's worth considering.

That's not showing from the way people are reacting to the reaction. I also thought it was obvious enough, but if it wasn't, someone needed to speak up. I've seen too many threads on here spiral downward due to simple misunderstandings and ill-advised wisecracks that take no account of anyone but oneself. This doesn't need to happen if perfectly intelligent people will also apply kindness and wisdom of the sort that I've been fortunate enough to experience all the times I've tried to be understood in a second language.

That depends on the type of marks, but all right. In that case one asks: what is one's theory of the crime? In other words, how does one infer that the marks came to be? What do they look like under heavy magnification? There is no whizzing scenario that would have potential to create such marks. A much closer look at them could give an answer; for example, perhaps it has dings that look like little castle wall crenelations. Those are typical of edge dings, bag marks often found on fully uncirculated and original Morgans when the edge of one coin smacks into the surface of another. They are so common that the ANA grading guide for Morgans is very specific about the quantity, location, and prominence of contact marks at each MS gradation.
I keep after this because it is such an important principle: how does one believe this could have happened? You've already seen how many people we get posting parking lot coins and hoping they are Rare Mint Errors. Not one in twenty has learned enough about the minting process to ask him or herself how the mint could possibly have caused the situation on display; they just figure that if the coin is f-bombed up that way, the mint must have done it. That of course is a lot like looking at a totaled Camry and asking how the Toyota factory screwed the car up so badly. Thus with this coin. We look closely enough at it to develop a theory of how the marks could credibly have happened.

Sorry, couldn't resist JKK...... all in fun my friend. (**Please don't blackball me**)

How is it possible that any US collector and native English speaker can't spell "nickel" correctly even while collecting them? How can anyone not see this as waving the Banner of Dumbth?
Seriously. I want to know. I understand spelling problems with the English language, which is infamous worldwide for its inconsistent phonics and homophones. Other cultures don't need spelling classes in elementary school. I get that it's hard. And if a coin collector misspells something obscure unrelated to coins, such as "amphictiony" or "enforcement," I see no reason for embarrassment. But "nickel"? When there is no such thing as a "nickle"? This is not a word that requires a Ph.D in chemistry. This is a word we grow up with and have used thousands of times by adulthood, even if saying we didn't have two nickels to rub together. For US coin collectors it's in the wheelhouse, like "cent" or "penny" or "dollar." It's so common that to collect US coins while boycotting all nickels or references to nickels would be bizarre. And even if one did, the copper-nickel alloys would still be in play.
Nickel. Nickel. Nickel. Nickel. It's a coin term as well as the name of an element.
Come now. You--whoever you might be--cannot possibly be telling me you don't know how to spell that word, or that you learned it wrong because you saw it written as "nickle" by the mint or in coin books. Are you dyslexic? If so, I feel for you, but that is also why there is spellcheck (which I see highlighting four terms in this post as I review it). There is no prompt for spelling it wrong, unless "semi-literate collectors on message boards" count as prompts.
I am lighting a candle rather than cursing the darkness. If you have been spelling it wrong, this post is my gift to you. You now never need to make this mistake again. I herewith issue an amnesty for previous misspellings, which we will not harp on again. Clean slate, fresh start. You are free, liberated, ready to collect nickels and talk about them in a way that will not invite disdain. I'm glad I could be of assistance and I wish you many years of intelligent-sounding coin collecting discussion.

I don't mind slang. I have a natural gentle drawl that sometimes becomes quite pronounced, sometimes say "ain't" and "I reckon," and otherwise colloquialize my speech and writing in ways that don't take away from understanding. What I mind is dumbth, or unthinking speech. I don't mind typos; I make them and expect them to happen to others. But "nickle" is too core to our hobby, and misspelling it is like writing "doller" or "corter" or "Libberty." It's not the only one that looks awful, just the one that stood out to me at the time. Others happen.
For example:
The misuse of "literally." "My head literally exploded!" If only. I have a couple M-80s I can loan you.
"Off of." The 'of' is not needed. I'm sure Kurt would never snarl at kids to get "off of" his lawn, being an educated person. JT2 is right to object likewise to "where are you at?" as the 'at' is superfluous.
"Irregardless" is butt-ugly and a syllable too long, but at least is not unclear.
Of course, one person's comfortable colloquialism is another person's nails on the chalkboard. (Children, we used to have classroom boards made of slate. Fingernails run across them created an ear-torturing shriek.) I maintain that one can be colloquial without dumbth. And there is a difference between speech and writing in that speech flows out and is ephemeral (unless you go around recording it), whereas in writing one has lots of time to consider. And the "I write like I talk" thing is essentially a confession of cluelessness, for the reason of my typical rejoinder: "That's sad. People don't read like they listen."

How is it possible that any US collector and native English speaker can't spell "nickel" correctly even while collecting them? How can anyone not see this as waving the Banner of Dumbth?
Seriously. I want to know. I understand spelling problems with the English language, which is infamous worldwide for its inconsistent phonics and homophones. Other cultures don't need spelling classes in elementary school. I get that it's hard. And if a coin collector misspells something obscure unrelated to coins, such as "amphictiony" or "enforcement," I see no reason for embarrassment. But "nickel"? When there is no such thing as a "nickle"? This is not a word that requires a Ph.D in chemistry. This is a word we grow up with and have used thousands of times by adulthood, even if saying we didn't have two nickels to rub together. For US coin collectors it's in the wheelhouse, like "cent" or "penny" or "dollar." It's so common that to collect US coins while boycotting all nickels or references to nickels would be bizarre. And even if one did, the copper-nickel alloys would still be in play.
Nickel. Nickel. Nickel. Nickel. It's a coin term as well as the name of an element.
Come now. You--whoever you might be--cannot possibly be telling me you don't know how to spell that word, or that you learned it wrong because you saw it written as "nickle" by the mint or in coin books. Are you dyslexic? If so, I feel for you, but that is also why there is spellcheck (which I see highlighting four terms in this post as I review it). There is no prompt for spelling it wrong, unless "semi-literate collectors on message boards" count as prompts.
I am lighting a candle rather than cursing the darkness. If you have been spelling it wrong, this post is my gift to you. You now never need to make this mistake again. I herewith issue an amnesty for previous misspellings, which we will not harp on again. Clean slate, fresh start. You are free, liberated, ready to collect nickels and talk about them in a way that will not invite disdain. I'm glad I could be of assistance and I wish you many years of intelligent-sounding coin collecting discussion.

Toned, no. Brutally cleaned and environmentally damaged, yes. Your photos show clearly the horizontal scratches that usually hint at abrasive cleaning, so the takeaway here is to look for those going forward.
It's sad because if it weren't for the damage, the coin might have been a rather nice one. Notice that the full horn is visible, a must for the better circulated grades. Not that it automatically confers a certain grade, but it is one of the easiest weeder features of the type. On well-worn examples, the tip is absent, and often the wear extends to leaving only the bottom arc discernible.

Can't help you. I like cucumbres but not so much pickels.

A good laugh (with you, not at you).
Seriously. What you need to know is that this type of fake is a frequent flier here, with about two per week and people wanting to know if it's real. It nearly never is (much fun giving the bad news; some people debate with us about that and try to demand we validate their misunderstandings). The hard part for us (which some do not bother with) is to remember that while we longtimers may have seen hundreds of bad cast counterfeits and less bad but clear replicas over the years, the new poster comes to us with an honest question and hasn't seen the last couple hundred phonies we saw. They have no idea it's a Standard Noob Post and that is not the new poster's fault.
So your best bet is to have a laugh, give it up, and check off a key step on the numismatic learning ladder. Other key steps include never buying coins off Etsy for any reason, never basing value perceptions on the offering price, realizing that everyone's copper 1943 penny is somehow faked, and realizing that most doubling is mechanical (earning no premium) rather than die (which would be a premium coin). We have all passed through them in one way or another, though we do have a couple people who don't seem to absorb the new information.

A good laugh (with you, not at you).
Seriously. What you need to know is that this type of fake is a frequent flier here, with about two per week and people wanting to know if it's real. It nearly never is (much fun giving the bad news; some people debate with us about that and try to demand we validate their misunderstandings). The hard part for us (which some do not bother with) is to remember that while we longtimers may have seen hundreds of bad cast counterfeits and less bad but clear replicas over the years, the new poster comes to us with an honest question and hasn't seen the last couple hundred phonies we saw. They have no idea it's a Standard Noob Post and that is not the new poster's fault.
So your best bet is to have a laugh, give it up, and check off a key step on the numismatic learning ladder. Other key steps include never buying coins off Etsy for any reason, never basing value perceptions on the offering price, realizing that everyone's copper 1943 penny is somehow faked, and realizing that most doubling is mechanical (earning no premium) rather than die (which would be a premium coin). We have all passed through them in one way or another, though we do have a couple people who don't seem to absorb the new information.

Eventually, though, surely you'll get all those stewed up or baked, and thus make way for the badgers.

Here's where the red book shines. Suppose you are going through your Mercury dimes. You review the price listings for them and determine that in worn condition only a few are with significant premiums, older ones tend to have modest premiums. Whether the prices are up to date is beside the point; the question is relative values. Knowing this, you can rip through your Mercs and figure out which ones, if any, merit a closer look. The rest can be a lower priority. For example, you will be totally on the lookout for 16-Ds. You don't even have to know much about coins to look over the tables and see what stands out from a value standpoint.

If you mean are they worth paying $50 or so each to have professionally graded and slabbed, that's a no.

For holders, there are some good options. You could staple them into cardboard flips (dealer would probably just do it for you for free), put them in flexible clear plastic saflips (same), or buy rigid, round, clear plastic holders for them called airtites (dealer would charge but they're cheap). All those are real easy and happen with one quick trip to a dealer.

Sometimes when a coin takes a beating, its raised lettering gets pushed in some direction or other. This did not happen at the mint, so it's post-mint damage. The coin is worth 1c.

Sometimes when a coin takes a beating, its raised lettering gets pushed in some direction or other. This did not happen at the mint, so it's post-mint damage. The coin is worth 1c.

Sometimes when a coin takes a beating, its raised lettering gets pushed in some direction or other. This did not happen at the mint, so it's post-mint damage. The coin is worth 1c.

Peruse at your leisure.
capped die

From a financial standpoint, no.

From a financial standpoint, no.

From a financial standpoint, no.