I know little about coins but I have one that I think is unusual. It is what looks to be an 1883 US nickel, liberty head on one side, a V on the other but is apparently gold or gold plated. I have read that such coins were used to defraud & passed as $5 gold pieces. Can anyone give me some more info about it, especially what it might be worth? Any help is appreciated.
These coins are gold plated today because of the story of Josh Tatum who supposedly plated them and passed them off as $5 gold. I don't know how true the story really is...but as a result many modern plated examples have been made. They are actually considered damaged and worth less than an unplated example.
They carry a little bit of a higher premium, and definitely represent good 'ol American Inginuity, or should I say Scam skills. You can find them from $10-$25. Like you said in 1883 some wiseguys thought they could make a buck off of unsuspecting westereners and people in other countries, soon the mint realized their mistake and began to add cents to the coins. The funny thing is though is that a lot of people believed that they were $5 gold pieces!! LoL
There are thousands of times more modern plated 1883 'No Cents' nickels than genuine Racketeer Nickels. The odds are yours is a modern plated coin. If the gold was plated over worn areas of the coin it is almost certainly a modern plated coin. Post good photos if possible.
Many do but not all. Racketeer Nickels were made by many different people and not all went to the trouble to create reeding.
English coin designs were changed in 1887 (the Jubilee issue). The new six pence coins carried no denomination, and many were quickly gold-plated by those hoping to pass them as half sovereigns. Maybe some Americans made enough money passing nickles as half eagles in 1883 to afford a trip to England.
Interesting. My recollection was that some "forgers" (if that is the correct term) were lazy and didn't bother with the reeding.
As the others have mentioned, they were colored to pass off as a $5 gold since the word 'cents' is not on it. They are reffered to as "Racketeer" nickels. edit: looks like others beat me to it.
You notice the last sentence in the description on that site says GENERALLY the ones used in 1883 have reeded edges. And the site also repeats the Josh Tatum fiction. So other parts may be questionable as well.
Since the US had never made any gold coins with a smooth edge, while the nickel 5-cent coins did have a smooth edge, it would follow that someone who really wanted to pass a racketeer nickel off as a $5 gold piece would make the effort to reed the edges. I'm holding an 1881 $5 gold piece in one hand, and an 1882 Shield nickel in the other hand right now, and there definitely is a difference in the way they feel.
I read long ago that most of these in existence were made for collectors, and not to defraud the public, because of the notoriety of the story. $5 was a lot of money back then, and I would think a forger, if he was really trying to pass it off as a $5 gold piece, would not have forgotten the reeding. People took that kind of thing a lot more serious back then. I have seen both reeded and non-reeded examples, and I always assume they are made for collectors unless there was some proof of them being made back in 1883. Remember, that story was so famous that it wasn't long before the whole country had read about these forgeries back in 1883. Chris
