Cherry Picking Jeff nickels is going to be a challenge

earlwbollinger

BR>
Well I looked at one of my 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 weakly struck obverse, note that the "IN" part of "In God We Trust" is very weakly struck.

On the reverse, the Keelboat barely shows any planks at all with nails in them. 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.

TheNumish

You've decided all this from one mint set? Also comparing business strikes to proof coins is like comparing apples to oranges. I got 200 mint sets and went through them. Was very, very impressed with the 2004-P Keel Boats. Out of the 200 mint sets I received PCGS graded roughly 25 coins MS-67 coins and 30 MS-66. That's the P and D coins added together. Didn't send any in that I didn't think had some shot at 67. That's the highest percentage of high grade nickels I've ever received from going through mint sets.

earlwbollinger

Well I actually went through a number of mint sets too, and submitted some that I thought had a shot at
MS67 too.