In 2001, reports Tom Griffith at the Rapid City Journal, archeologists in Deadwood, South Dakota, uncovered a cache of more than 200 coins while excavating part of the Old West city's Chinatown. The coins were catalogued and in 2009 transferred to a storage facility in Deadwood's city hall. But recently, coin experts Margie and Kevin Akin took another look at the stash. While they found that many of the objects were brass religious medals or gaming tokens, one coin did stand out: an 1883 racketeer nickel.
60 Day LME Nickel Warehouse Stocks Level: 6 Month LME Nickel Warehouse Stocks Level: 1 Year LME Nickel Warehouse Stocks Level. 1885 US LIBERTY V NICKEL RARE KEY DATE VG-FINE DETAILS COIN FREE SHIPPING IN USA. C $20.59 shipping. 1 bid Ending 12 Feb at 23:18 EST 7d 1h.
According to one tall tale, the racketeer nickel was developed after the U.S. mint issued the Liberty nickel in 1883. On one side it had the head of Liberty. On the obverse, it simply had the Roman numeral V and nowhere did it spell out its value as 5 cents. As it so happened, the nickel was close in size to the $5 gold piece, which had a similar design. So, as the story goes, a man named Josh Tatum began gold-plating the nickels and passing them off as $5 gold coins, for instance buying a 5-cent cigar then placing the coin on the counter and getting $4.95 in change. When he was finally caught, he was exonerated since he was unable to speak, and thus never actually misrepresented the currency.
While that story is apocryphal, the nickels are not. The problem is, points out Sarah Laskow at Atlas Obscura, they are easily faked and show up regularly on eBay. The Akins tell Griffith that the Deadwood nickel is only worth about 10 cents because of its poor condition, but that's not the point. What makes the Deadwood coin special is that it may be the only racketeer nickel to actually show up in an archeological dig. The fact that it was found in situ in Deadwood gives it meaning even if it's not valuable. 'It's pretty easy to plate a nickel,' says Kevin Akin. 'It makes such a great story, but they're fakes. None of them has the provenance of this particular coin, the Deadwood Racketeer Nickel.'
Griffith reports that newspaper accounts from Deadwood in 1880s say people weren't actually trying to pass off the nickels at the poker table (and risk getting shot over the ruse). Instead, young men used the gold-plated coins as cuff buttons that 'to the uninitiated look for all the world like genuine five-dollar gold pieces.'
V Nickel Prices
Griffith reports that U.S. Treasury officials publicly scoffed at the idea that the coins could ever be used for counterfeiting, but that was probably just a smoke screen. Coin Trackers reports that they wised up and began printing the word 'Cents' on the back of the coins starting in 1884. The nickel was produced until 1913 when it was replaced by the buffalo nickel.
1883 Liberty Head Nickel in circulated condition — from the collection
The Liberty Head Nickel (often called the V Nickel) is a U.S. five-cent coin that was designed by Charles Barber, the Chief Engraver at the U.S. Mint. Over half a billion Liberty Head Nickels were minted between 1883 and 1912.
In 2001, reports Tom Griffith at the Rapid City Journal, archeologists in Deadwood, South Dakota, uncovered a cache of more than 200 coins while excavating part of the Old West city's Chinatown. The coins were catalogued and in 2009 transferred to a storage facility in Deadwood's city hall. But recently, coin experts Margie and Kevin Akin took another look at the stash. While they found that many of the objects were brass religious medals or gaming tokens, one coin did stand out: an 1883 racketeer nickel.
60 Day LME Nickel Warehouse Stocks Level: 6 Month LME Nickel Warehouse Stocks Level: 1 Year LME Nickel Warehouse Stocks Level. 1885 US LIBERTY V NICKEL RARE KEY DATE VG-FINE DETAILS COIN FREE SHIPPING IN USA. C $20.59 shipping. 1 bid Ending 12 Feb at 23:18 EST 7d 1h.
According to one tall tale, the racketeer nickel was developed after the U.S. mint issued the Liberty nickel in 1883. On one side it had the head of Liberty. On the obverse, it simply had the Roman numeral V and nowhere did it spell out its value as 5 cents. As it so happened, the nickel was close in size to the $5 gold piece, which had a similar design. So, as the story goes, a man named Josh Tatum began gold-plating the nickels and passing them off as $5 gold coins, for instance buying a 5-cent cigar then placing the coin on the counter and getting $4.95 in change. When he was finally caught, he was exonerated since he was unable to speak, and thus never actually misrepresented the currency.
While that story is apocryphal, the nickels are not. The problem is, points out Sarah Laskow at Atlas Obscura, they are easily faked and show up regularly on eBay. The Akins tell Griffith that the Deadwood nickel is only worth about 10 cents because of its poor condition, but that's not the point. What makes the Deadwood coin special is that it may be the only racketeer nickel to actually show up in an archeological dig. The fact that it was found in situ in Deadwood gives it meaning even if it's not valuable. 'It's pretty easy to plate a nickel,' says Kevin Akin. 'It makes such a great story, but they're fakes. None of them has the provenance of this particular coin, the Deadwood Racketeer Nickel.'
Griffith reports that newspaper accounts from Deadwood in 1880s say people weren't actually trying to pass off the nickels at the poker table (and risk getting shot over the ruse). Instead, young men used the gold-plated coins as cuff buttons that 'to the uninitiated look for all the world like genuine five-dollar gold pieces.'
V Nickel Prices
Griffith reports that U.S. Treasury officials publicly scoffed at the idea that the coins could ever be used for counterfeiting, but that was probably just a smoke screen. Coin Trackers reports that they wised up and began printing the word 'Cents' on the back of the coins starting in 1884. The nickel was produced until 1913 when it was replaced by the buffalo nickel.
1883 Liberty Head Nickel in circulated condition — from the collection
The Liberty Head Nickel (often called the V Nickel) is a U.S. five-cent coin that was designed by Charles Barber, the Chief Engraver at the U.S. Mint. Over half a billion Liberty Head Nickels were minted between 1883 and 1912.
Earlier U.S. coins had been minted from precious metals that were worth approximately the value of the coin — for example, a three cent silver coin contained about three cents worth of silver. But there was great economic uncertainty after the Civil War and it was decided that it might be a better idea to mint coins from less valuable metal so that the resulting coins wouldn't be hoarded. Thanks in part to political pressure from the nickel mining lobby, Congress passed laws in 1865 and 1866 authorizing the Mint to create new three-cent and five-cent coins using a copper/nickel alloy (75% copper, 25% nickel).
The Liberty Head Nickel was the second five-cent nickel produced by the Mint. The first, the Shield nickel, had been designed in 1865 and 1866 by James B. Longacre. It had presented many production problems and had very difficult to strike successfully in the new alloy.
In 1881 Mint Director Archibald Snowden ordered Chief Engraver Barber to create possible designs for new one-cent, three-cent, and five-cents coins. All three coins were to have simple, nearly identical designs — Lady Liberty and the date on the obverse, a wreath and the denomination on the reverse — that would make them easy to strike in copper and nickel. Barber created and fine-tuned the designs and then submitted them to Snowden.
Snowden decided to abandon the one-cent and three-cent coins because he felt they were too small for people to handle comfortably, but he told Barber to continue work on the five-cent coin. Barber made a few more slight changes to the design which were approved by the Mint Director, and then twenty-five sample coins were struck. These sample coins were sent to Treasury Secretary Charles Folger for what was supposed to be routine approval.
To everyone's surprise, Folger did NOT approve the new coin. He pointed out a problem that nobody at the Mint had noticed — according to U.S. law, the words 'United States of America' were required to appear on the REVERSE of the coin, not the OBVERSE as Snowden and Barber had laid it out. Snowden did not want to change the design and asked for an exception for this one coin, but Folger was adamant that the design needed to be changed. Barber moved the phrase to the reverse of the coin, adjusted the rest of his design to accomodate it, and had new sample coins struck. Folger approved the revised design quickly and the Liberty Head Nickel began production in 1883.
V Nickel Mint Mark
(Continued… History of the Liberty Head Nickel, part 2)
