Got my 2004 keelboats from the mint..........

bearcave

Has anyone found any nice ones yet? I ordered 4 rolls so I could rip 2 apart to look and put 2 away.

earlwbollinger

I was terribly disapointed at the roll I got from the bank.
The nickels were all beat to death right out of the roll.
I wound up submitting a couple out of the extra mint set I bought instead.
One mint set looked to have a pair that was pretty nice. (I hope, knock on wood.)

Shamika

PICTURES, PICTURES!

edsiajb

I got a set from the mint and they are horrible. I am quickly loosing interest in anything the mint has to offer.

earlwbollinger

PICTURES, PICTURES!
Darn. . .
Sorry, it'll have to wait until they get back from PCGS.
I just submitted a box full of coins. I also used up a bunch of my free submission freebies
in this one too. I had put in the nickels while I was at it.
I'll take some photos of one of my other mint sets tonight.
I did put up a nice pic of a proof nickel in my "Fun with my new Pentax Camera" thread though.

19Lyds

I ordered and received a $25.00 bag each from Philly and Denver. The Denver coins were the better of the two. Got some nice ones but nothing worth wasting a picture on! The Phillies had almost nothing to keep! Lots of nicks, dings, gouges, and scratches. It was as if they played hacky-sack with em before shipping! Oh well!

earlwbollinger

PICTURES, PICTURES!

Well I looked at one of my other mint sets and these pictures show the typical nickels you'd get in a mint set.
Note on the keelboat nickel how it is weakly struck with a worn down die.
On the obverse, note that the "IN" part of "In God We Trust" is weakly struck.
On the reverse, the Keelboat barely shows any planks with nails in them at all. The planks on the hull should be distinct and showing nails.
There also should be a bit more detail to the crew et cetera.
You can compare to a proof nickel to see the distinctions and differences. The closer you can find a coin to look like a proof the better it is.
Next will be the scratches and dings on the coins, the better coins will have little to no dings and scratches on them.
With the process they use to put them into packages they have a lot of opportunities to ding the coins up a lot.
The plastic covering isn't all that damages in these shots, the nickels pretty much look like that in a mint package.
So cherry picking nickels out of many mint packages is the method to get some decent ones.
I beleive that like the Full Step nickels, you want to find the ones struck with new dies, and not older worn down dies.