Looks crisp with very minimal wear whatsoever other than a decent amount of patina if I'm not mistaken. Doing my best with pictures so color might be slightly off. Worth slabbing or would that make "no cents?"
Interesting that the 1883 with Cents is worth more, even though it's 3x higher mintage. If yours is uncleaned, prob $10. Does yours have a gold wash on it? They passed these off as $5 gold pieces, so they put the cents on. And recently, they have been putting gold wash on to fake that it was originally done. The gold plate would hurt the value, unless it was original.
Welcome to CT. Very nice strike and little wear, but the corrosion would limit the collector value. I was just talking about this coin with someone recently. The mint made an error by not including the word "cents" on the reverse and part-way through the year, they corrected it to add the identifying denomination. The mintage without cents was just above 5 million while the coin with added "cents" was around 15 million...with the oddities of collectors, an uncirculated "with cents" sells for more than an uncirculated "no cents". Too bad about the corrosion, about the only thing you could do is to put it in a flip to keep it from deteriorating further.
Nice detail on the hair and liberty. So perhaps it has been cleaned. As the reverse shows the corrosion Kentucky mentions, and the obverse has a few spots left, as if the cleaning didn't get it all.
Thank you guys, I figured it was corrosion but I couldn't tell. And no I haven't cleaned the nickel at all . And I have no clue if there is gold within the coin , I'm not familiar with that. I just have an album late 1800s to early 1900s & that was the oldest and nicest. Almost all of the other early 1900s don't look even close to the quality of this one in regards to detail. Back in the album it goes. I appreciate all of the input and knowledge you guys help me with.
I'm not saying you cleaned it. It could have been cleaned before you took possession of it. Some kind of acid coin cleaning dip to get the corrosion off. But with photos you can never be positive. I am sure the coin looks better in hand.
I gotcha.. Yeah, that's very possible prior owner cleaned some of them. There's a few that I've ran across that look pretty clean like a few of my early 1900 Penny's and 1842,1843 and I believe 1848 half dimes, they look very odd. Almost like a hologram tint to them. Not sure what causes that, being exposed to the elements or someone trying to clean them. And yes, in hand, compared to the others, world of difference in detail
With all the fuss about "racketeer nickels", or perhaps just because it was a new design, lots and lots of these got set aside when they first came out. I wouldn't be surprised if there are more uncirculated and AU examples of the 1883 No Cents than all the other dates of the series put together. It's certainly the cheapest in those grades.
I have one of these that my grandma gave me. Interesting story behind it. Racketeer nickel. Here is mine just to show not to steel your post.
