Notice the ACE said those are RETAIL values, what you would have to pay a dealer for them, not what you could sell them for.
If the gold one is gold plated it *could* have been plated back in the time to make people think it was a $5 Gold Piece, instead of a 5 cent piece - the reason they added "CENTS" to the later ones. Although, ppl have been plating them since then too.
Here’s what Clawcoins is talking about. Supposedly, some clever folks plated the original Liberty nickels in gold and passed them off to merchants as $5 gold pieces, quite a return on “investment” for the time. The Mint quickly added “cents” to the reverse. Somebody gave me one a couple of years back. No telling when it actually was plated. Still, it’s pretty neat.
No real racketeer nickels have been authenticated yet. Both these coins are not extremely valuable, but are worth saving for your collection.
In 1883 the new nickel design started to be struck and they had forgotten to put cents on the reverse. The legend grew that people gold plated these and tried to pass them as the "new" 5-dollar gold piece. This might be odd since the diameter of a nickel is 21.21 mm and the 5-dollar gold was 16.50 mm. Consider the commotion of people mistaking the new Susie B dollars for quarters... Fun fact, they changed the design later in the year to correct the "error" and started to put "cents" on the back... Which is the more valuable... Actually the "with cents" sells for more than the centless variety.
To follow up on what @Santinidollar said. Anybody can gold plate the 1883 NC nickels and it's probably impossible to tell if it was done 135 years ago or 30 days ago
I may have dreamed this. Don’t crucify me if I did..... I remember watching a program (Diggers, I think).... A floor was taken up in an old Dodge City saloon. Among the assorted coins and whatnots found under the floorboards, there was in fact a gold plated 1883 nickel. Surely that would lend credence to the tale wouldn’t it?.... I mean.. It was on TV so it has to be real, right?
I believe it happened. On what scale? Who knows? However, since it is so easy to gold plate 1883 NC nickels, I really don't think anything you see today is worth a premium.
Diameter of a half eagle (5 dollar gold) is 21 mm. So the difference in diameter is only .21 mm Even the quarter eagle is 18 mm. 16.5 mm is the diameter of a 1/10 oz AGE which has a face value of $5.
