Post your racketeer nickels!

I found this in a collection I recently purchased. Thought I’d share and see who else has/appreciates these.

 

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Don't have one personally, but I did get one for my wife a few years ago as a gift... I may add it to my list to photograph tomorrow

 

Almost no gold plated 1883 nickels you're going to see today were plated in 1883, except maybe some love tokens and other jewelry. They are effectively "racketeer racketeer nickels." Only one coin has been archaeologically dated to 1883, in Deadwood, SD, where plating a nickel and passing it as a $5 would have gotten you shot.

Here's an article about it.

 

Wow, an actual racketeer nickel! Great article, thank you for sharing. And yes, it is extremely unlikely any of the nickels we find played with gold are true racketeer nickels, but it’s fun to pretend.

 

Does the real fake one have a reeded edge?

 

No, no nickels from the mint have reeded edges.

 

Right. But does the real fake racketeer nickel have a reeded edge carved into it?

 

I’ve yet to see any racketeer nickel, real or fake, with a reeded edge.

 

Don't have any but I've always wanted one,have you ever seen one actually counterfeited with real gold dies?.

 

No mention of that in the article. That would have taken a completely different skill from simply plating it in gold. The guys carving "racketeer love tokens" would have been up to that challenge. This is one I shot for my 2010 calendar. Note that it was plated after being engraved and where it's worn, the plating is gone.

 

No reeded edge. Thanks for posting @Seattlite86, I really like yours.

 

I enjoyed the article, especially the part where ' “A number of the toney young men about town are wearing cuff buttons made of the new nickels,” the newspaper reported. “They are highly plated with gold, and to the uninitiated look for all the world like genuine five-dollar gold pieces.” ' I wonder if any of those buttons still exist?

 

The trouble with many racketeer nickels is that you never know when they have been gold plated. Was it in 1883 or was it last week?

I have posted this several times. It has a nicely reeded edge, which is supposed to be one of the markers for the real thing.



I have a few other candidates. One has very crude edge reeding. It's not subtle like this one, and the piece is not plated. I have a conventional piece that is plated, but has no reeding. I bought all three of them in a bid wall auction in the same lot for less than $15 many years ago. My coin friends thought I was a fool to buy the lot, but to this piece was "worth the price of admission." I've seen pieces like this only a time or two, and they sold for a heck of lot more money.

Before you laugh, this bid wall is where I bought my 1796 Quarter, 1796 dime and my 1793 Chain Cent plus many other coins. All of them are in PCGS or NGC holders with straight grades that range from VF-25 to AU-50. This was not your average bid wall. Coins were sold off of it that have subsequently sold for 6 figures. I knew they were good, but I didn't have to money to buy them then.

I have another piece that was part of bunch of "V nickels" my parents bought for me when I was just getting started as a collector. All of the coins, except this one, were you run of the mill Liberty Nickels in Good. This piece is a VF 1883 No Cents Nickel. It has traces of gold within the letters, especially on the reverse. Is it a former racketeer nickel? Who knows?

 

I have no doubt that this was not made in the 1880s but is still a good conversation piece.

 

I haven't heard of any, but that doesn't mean there aren't any. Of course, if the more modern racketeers wanted to be more historically accurate with what they were selling, they'd make some of these rather than just plate nickels. But then again, this requires a skill set far beyond simply gold plating a nickel and slapping a price tag and apocryphal story on it.

 

Here is the $5 gold beside an 1883 racketeer nickel. All of the pre-1933 half eagles had an eagle on the reverse. So that side should not have fooled anyone. It's only if you only looked at the obverse that there may have been some confusion.

 

I think I understand your question now. The fakes would need a reeded edge to match the $5 gold coins of the era. I don’t know if the one in the article had a reeded edge. I couldn’t find anything in my limited research.

I know better than to laugh at your numismatic endeavors. You made a great purchase, and I’d have done the same (as would likely any of us). Fascinating coins and I appreciate you sharing your collection and knowledge.

 

please delete... this was posted in error

 

One of the "6 figure coins" I mentioned is now one of the finest known 1804 dimes. It graded AU. I scraped together every penny I had. It was bid up to something over $5,500. A dealer friend of mine, who was there bidding for someone else, gave me a nod that we had reached his limit, but I just didn't pull the trigger because I was at the limits of my bank account. I should have bid. My wife would have supported me, but I've always been on the conservative side with money.

It would have been a near item to have because it shares the 14 star reverse with the 1804 quarter eagle I have have.

 

Well, if the coin has any wear under the gold it's almost certainly not contemporary. There wouldn't have been time to accumulate wear, be plated, and passed ...