Is this 1883 Shield Nickel real?

pcgs69

I know it's not big money either way but the die work looks a bit sloppy. Was that just the nature of shield nickels, or could this potentially be a contemporary counterfeit? The date looks a bit uneven that that circle above the date is cut off to make room for the date. Thanks for any input!

IkesT

It's real.

yosclimber

It looks genuine to me.
They did a lot of "die work", because the dies kept cracking, striking the copper nickel alloy that was harder than
the usual copper and silver.
So there are a fair number of RPDs, etc., because they were making so many dies.

davewesen

there are so many double dies and re-punched mintmarks, that many look a little wonky

pcgs69

Awesome, thank you!

morgandollar1878

Yes, it looks real.

rnkmyer1

Looks a lot like my 1883, so I would say real.

CaptHenway

Genuine.
As to the small indent into the knob above the date, whenever the design of the coin called for a date punch to be hammered into the die near the design (a method phased out in 1907-1908), the metal displaced by the punch entering the die might have extruded into that design and crushed part of it closed a bit. This is quite often seen on the smaller Seated Liberty denominations where the date causes little indents into the base of Miss Liberty. Look above the date digits on these dies:

AngryTurtle

Kewl! Thanks to @CaptHenway, I learned something today.

CRHer700

@pcgs69 said:
I know it's not big money either way but the die work looks a bit sloppy. Was that just the nature of shield nickels, or could this potentially be a contemporary counterfeit? The date looks a bit uneven that that circle above the date is cut off to make room for the date. Thanks for any input!

This is probably not really useful, but if your shield nickel has the same diameter as a modern nickel, then it is probably fake. Shield nickels were smaller in diameter, but the same weight as later issues.