The Planchet
A Publication of the Indianapolis Coin Club
Issue 475

Newsletter

September 2006

Membership numbers: ANA C-131170, CSNS L-600,
ISNA LM 243

indianapoliscoinclub.org
The Meetings of the Indianapolis Coin Club are held the fourth Monday ofeach month at the Nora Library at 8625 Guilford Avenue in Indianapolis,
Indiana. The Meetings consist of a business session, an intermission, educational program, and a numismatic auction. Doors open at 6:00pm,
meeting will begin at 7:00pm.

The next meeting will be
Monday,September 25, 2006!

September’s Educational Program:“State of the Hobby”
by Cos RaimondiThis annual event is one that should not be missed! Cos will speak on many
topics such as: what is hot, what is not, prices of bullion and speculation into thenext year of the hobby! Please bring a friend for an enjoyable evening of numismatics!

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$$$$ “ALWAYS BUYING” $$$$
VINTON G. DOVE

PAYING TOP PRICES FOR ALL U.S. COINS

Certified Public Accountant
Collecting U.S. Coins Since 1952

DON’T SELL WITHOUT GETTING OUR OFFER!!!

LARRY HYLTONBROWNSBURG, IN

ANA, ISNA-LM, CSNS-LM(317) 852-8458
Jim Fuson
Retired Teacher & Coach

443 Wellington Road
Indianapolis, IN 46260(317) 257-1906
Fax(317) 257-2220

R.O.M.A. COIN
Specializing in U.S. RARE COINS

Collector of old U.S. Coins
And old Sports Cards
Also have some coins and cards for sale5795 E. Co. Rd. 350 S., Plainfield, IN 46168
ICC & ANA
(317) 839-5178

ORVA (ORV) DETRICK
Professional Numismatist

PO Box 267
Donnelsville, Ohio
45319-0267
Phone: 937-882-6730
Cell #: 937-284-0412
E-mail: Romacoin@aol.com
Buy/Sell Bullion: Gold & Silver

Advertise in the Indianapolis Coin Club Newsletter! The cost is only $35.00 for a business card size ad for 12 issues!

The 2006 Indianapolis Coin Club
Officers and Board Members
President
Mark Eberhardt
Vice-President
Jim Roehrdanz
Secretary
Jim Goaziou
Treasurer
Karl Kreck
EditorAmy Eberhardt(fubacoin@aol.com) ph. (317) 837-5682
Past President
Sgt-at-Arms
Board Member 2005-2006
Board Member 2005-2006
Board Member 2005-2006
Board Member 2006-2007
Board Member 2006-2007
Board Member 2006-2007

Vinton Dove
Jim Warden
Dave Reid
Donald Black
Allen Dove
Jim Fuson
Cos RaimondiCharles Alber

State of the Hobby

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Cover

Advertisers-

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Shield Nickels-

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The Monthly Planchet is the official publication of theTreasurer’s Report-

Page 5

Secretary’s Report-

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Indianapolis Coin Club. It is published monthly in Indianapolis,
Indiana. All inquiries should be sent to ICC, P.O. Box 2897,
Indianapolis, Indiana, 46206.

Table of Contents

The Monthly Planchet, September 2006

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Page 2SHIELD NICKELS 1866 - 1883
By....Mike Schmidt

1866 saw a new coin released to a country still
suffering in the third year of a coin shortage resulting from uncertainty over the Civil War.
Struck in the same 75% copper 25% nickel alloythat had been used the previous year to makethree cent pieces, the shield nickel was yet anothersop thrown to Joseph Warton of Pennsylvania, theonly owner of a working nickel mine in this country. Viewed as a temporary measure only, it wasthought that the new coin being made of basemetal would not fall prey to the people who werestill hoarding precious metal coins. In this they
were correct and the new five cent piece enjoyedenthusiastic acceptance.
At the mint on the other hand the new coin
was not such a welcome subject. Nickel is a very
hard metal with a very high melting point. The
high melting temperature made alloying the metaldifficult. Other metals tended to boil off before
the nickel melted. Once the melt was completed
and the working of the alloy began the hardness ofthe metal resulted in much breakage of the equipment and shortened life of many of the forming
tools. Especially shortened was the life of the diesused to strike the coins. Even with heat softening
the planchets were only a little softer than themetal of the dies being used to strike them. Very
shortly after being put into use the dies would succumb to the stresses and begin cracking up. On
the obverse these cracks usually are found comingfrom the points of the leaves in the wreath thatwas draped over the central Shield device and radiating out to the rims. Other places for major
crack development would be from the rim throughpart of or all of the motto In God We Trust which
stretched along the top of the coin from the ten
o'clock to two o'clock, and from the rim up
though the date to the bottom of the shield. On
the reverse the most common places for cracks

were through the tops of the letters of UNITEDSTATES OF AMERICA and CENTS which encircled the central device of a large 5 surroundedby 13 stars the alternated with groups of threebars. These bars were also the source of much die
breakage with cracks and die chips forming
around them. The cracking on both side was often extensive and the shield nickel is almost always seen with cracks and often retained cuds orfull cuds. In fact the shield nickel is probable theseries most often encountered with full cuds.
Shortly into the second year of production,
1867, the mint made the first of several attempts
to reduce die breakage by removing the groups ofbars from between the stars on the reverse. Thismay have extended die life slightly but not significantly. After that, the mint merely worked on improved metallurgy to improve the die steels in an
attempt the reduce the number of dies required.
They were never very successful though and evenby the end of the series the die life never exceeded
an average of 28,000 coins per die. This during
an era when most denomination were averaging
around 200,000 coins per die. 1868 saw more
modifications made to the reverse with a new reverse hub being put into use. The changes areslight and the reasons for the unknown. The easiest way to recognize the new hub, which appears
on less than a third of the mintage for the year, is
to look at the star below the ES in STATES. If it
is pointing at the right serif of the E it is the hub of1867. If it points at the left serif of the S then it is
the hub of 1868. This hub was only used for thisone year. This hub was retired because of defects
in the hub. Typically coins struck from this hub
show parts of some of the letters missing because
they were broken off of the hub. I have neverseen a Hub of 1868 coin struck
from a die created from an unbroken hub. For thisThe Monthly Planchet, September 2006

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Page 3

reason a third and final hub appears in 1869.
(Breen reports that it also exist in 1868 but I havebeen unable to confirm this.) Like the hub of1867 the uppermost star points at the serif of theE. The key difference now is the star below AM.
On the hub of 1867 it points centered between the
A & M. On the hub of 1870 (Called that because
1870 was the first year all of the coins had thathub.) The star points at the center of the M. The
last hub change for the series came in 1870, thistime on the obverse. When Longacre designed thecoin he arranged the wreath into four clusters ofleaves on either side of the shield. The bottom
cluster on either side has three leaves and the rest
have four. Except for the second cluster from the
top on the right which has only three. In order tocorrect this unbalanced effect from 1866 to 1870
the fourth leaf was engraved into each working dieby hand! Finally in 1870 a new obverse hub wasraised which corrected that oversight and madesome slight adjustments to the arrow feathers etc.
When you consider the number of dies that had tobe hand engraved each year you can't help but
wonder why they didn't do that much earlier. One
side benefit is the chance to look for the scarcemissing leaf varieties from each of the first four
years.
Mintages were very heavy during the first four
years of production. The shield nickel was used
to supplement the meager amount of coinage incirculation and to begin retiring the fractional currency notes and the demand was great andmintage ranged from 18 million in 1869 to 28 million in 1867. After 1869 silver coins began flowing back into the country and demand for thenickel decreased. With this decreased demand
naturally came a reduction in production, 1870
saw just a few million made while 1871 became asemi-key for the series with less than half a million. Coinage rose again slightly still remained
around 4 million or less for each year through1876. 1873 saw another widely unrecognizedscarce variety. Coins produced through Feb 12th
used a date logotype with a "closed" 3. The balls
at the ends of the arms of the 3 were very close together and at first glance the 3 greatly resembled an 8.

At the same time the weight of the silver coins werechanged the date logo type on almost all of the coins
were also changed to show a more "open" 3. Only alittle over 300,000 closed 3 nickels were produced before the change was ordered making it rarer than the1871 semi key date.
By 1877 so much coinage had come out of hidingthat the Treasury vaults were becoming crammed with
it. Production of almost all coins ceased that year. For
this year and the next only proof nickels were struck.
Common belief has it that only 510 proof nickels werestruck in 1877 but this is much lower that the actual
mintage. Five hundred and ten was the number of silver proof SETS that were sold that year. While thesesets did include the minor coinages, it must be remembered that the various coins could also be ordered individually and the mint also sold sets of the minor coins
as well and good records of sales were not kept so accurate totals are not possible. In 1878 the supposed
mintage rose to about 2,800 coins. Not widely known
is that all of these were made from a leftover 1877 diethat had been repunched to 1878. Coinage for circulation began again 1879 and continued through 1883.
The 1879, 80, and 81 are the real keys to the series andare actually harder to find than the two proof only
years. The 1879 has the highest mintage of the groupat 29,000 coins. The 79 and 80 are about equal in difficulty to locate, just this side of impossible. The 1881is the easiest of the three to find but you may have toattend several shows before one turns up. The 1879
also has the distinction of coming with both a regular
date and an overdate. Some references claim that theoverdate is a proof only issue but I have seen businessstrike coins with the same obverse. For some reason
the mintage jumped up again in 1882 to over 11 millioncoins. The 1882 comes with both a "light" and a"heavy" 2 in the date. The heavy 2, because of it's
filled appearance is often offered as one of the five
1883/2 overdates by dealers who don't know how totell the difference. The final year of the shield nickel
saw the mintage drop back down to the one million
coin level. While this is one of the lower mintage, it is
a common coin since being the last year of issue it was
heavily saved. As mentioned earlier there were at least
five different dies that were overdated from 1882 to1883. The overdate is rather interesting because the1883 used a new style to the logotype with the digits
much wider apart than those found on 1882 so for the
3 to be over the 2 the original date had to be too far to

The Monthly Planchet, September 2006

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Page 4the viewers right.
With the short die life this series abounds with varieties, overdates, repunched dates, misplaced dates,
doubled dies, tripled dies, cracks and cuds. A great
many of these varieties are still not cataloged. Ed
Fletchers book on shields is a good start on the varieties for the series listing a couple hundred varieties,
but it is still just a drop in the bucket compared to whatis available out there.

Treasurer’s ReportAugust 2006
Income:50/50
Expenses:Western Reserve Ins. (yearly)
Newsletter Postage
Newsletter Printing
Bags for Exhibit Night
CO-D Quarters
Prizes for Exhibit Night$29.00$250.00$ 29.89$ 21.34$ 1.38$ 13.50$110.00$416.11

July Checkbook Balancecorrected to read
$2,759.84
from $2,736.84
August Checkbook Balance $2,372.11
ICC CD balance$17,226.85

Respectfully Submitted,
Karl Kreck - Treasurer

Secretary’s ReportAugust 28, 2006
President Mark Eberhardt called themeeting to order at 7:00pm. The visitors introduced were Roy and Becky
Maines from Terre Haute. Roy was amember several years ago.
The Secretary and Treasurer’s reports were both readand accepted.
Old Business- Mark announced that “Doc” Gerth andJames Held gave a presentation representing the ICC at the
Benjamin Harrison Home. He then repeated his desire toincrease the membership of the Club. He asked for volunteers to run for office at the November meeting who would

be willing to help the club in its efforts to reach that goal. Volunteers
should call him or Past President Vinton Dove.
Under New Business- Mark announced that the Club would begiven a table at the Indiana State Numismatic Association’s annual
Coin Show to advertise the Club and sign-up new members. The
Club will need volunteers to man the table during the hours of theshow, which will be held Friday, November 3 and Saturday, November 4. Volunteers would be handing out fliers and gift bags andshould contact Mark or Vinton to sign up. He also asked the members to contact local businesses to request items to put in the gift bags,
such as free food gift certificates, etc.
A request was received for a representative of the Club to speak on“The History of Money” at a local school. Tom Ferverda and Vinton
Dove volunteered to make the presentation.
Jim Warden gave a very interesting report on his trip to the ANAshow in Colorado and his visit to the Denver Mint. He said that exhibits at the show were impressive and included an 1870-CC $20 gold
piece and the ten 1933 $20 gold pieces that recently became known tothe public.
Board member, Jim Fuson, asked about the ICC Coin Show. Marksaid that the tentative date would be Saturday, March 16, 2007, andthat the Club is still trying to find a location. If anyone knows ofsome place that might be available, they should contact Mark or Vinton.
After the break, the annual Exhibitor’s night was held. Sevenmembers made exhibits. The prizes were awarded by a People’s
Choice” selection. The first place winner was given first choice of
one of the prizes available. The prizes included “Blue Ikes (19711974 uncirculated Silver Eisenhower Dollars in the original Blue envelopes), a Brown Ike (1973 proof Silver Eisenhower dollar in its
original Brown Box), Silver uncirculated American Eagles and a2005 set of Buffalo Nickels. The prizes were purchased at a large discount from Ken Felty, a member of the Marion Coin Club.
First place was won by Donn Wray, whose exhibit was an extensive
collection of Philippine Currency. Second place went to Bob
Bettcher, who exhibited a complete set of Uncirculated Flying Eagle
and Indian Head Cents. In third place was Junior Member Kurt
Miller, who showed his collection of Roman Coins. There was a tie
for fourth place, between Lyle Pelkin, who had a very unusual displayof the different types of New Orleans “O” mint marks on Morgan
Dollars and Vinton Dove, who displayed his uncirculated 20th century Type Set. Tied for sixth place were Charles Alber, displaying his
1892-1996 Half Dollar collection and Jay Dehority with his display of
proof Buffalo coins.
Amy Eberhardt, the Newsletter Editor, was the winner of the 50/50
drawing, and received $29.00.
Mark then announced that the Ohio State coin show would be in
Dublin, Ohio the following weekend.
The President thanked Tom Ferverda and Kurt Miller for their continuing efforts in running the 50/50 drawing and Charles Alber forcontinuing to bring the refreshments.
There were 28 people in attendance. The meeting was adjourned at
8:15pm.
Respectfully Submitted,
Vinton DoveThe Monthly Planchet, September 2006

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