Here is a story that is well known to collectors. In 1883 the mint replaced the Shield Nickel with the Liberty Nickel. The trouble was the first design for the new nickel only had a big "V" in the reverse to denote the value. Criminals noticed this. They also noted that the $5 gold piece of the period had a similar Liberty Head on the obverse and only a slightly large diameter, 21.2 versus 21.6 mm. The crooks started to gold plate the nickels and tried to pass them as $5 gold coins. When the scam worked, it paid them a close to $4.95 profit. The government caught up this scam and quickly made changes. The word "CENTS" was added to the design. Here are examples of the two nickels. The 1883 No Cents Nickel The 1883 With Cents Nickel Both of these nickels are Proofs, but you don't have spend that much money to put this box of two together. Circulated examples are not that expensive. In fact the 1883 No Cents Nickel is fairly common in EF to low end Mint State. A lot of people heard about the change in the design and saved them because they thought they would be "rare." That resulted in the opposite effect. Because so many were saved, the No Cents variety is now common despite a much lower mintage than the With Cents coin. (5.5 million vs. 16 million) The gold plated No Cents Nickels are also common, but often not for a good reason. Many pieces have been gold plated after the fact and sold to collectors as "racketeer nickels." It is not really possible to know if a piece was plated in 1883 or 1983, but one indicator that you might have the real thing is if it has a reeded edge. The reeded edge gold plated coins examples are not easy to find.
The coins that got me started. When I was 5 years old my aunt gave me an 1883 W/O Cents Liberty Nickel and an 1885 Liberty Nickel. The 1883 was near mint and the 1885 is posted here as my Avatar.
I was asking Inspector43 if he still had the two nickels, a gift from his aunt, that started his coin collecting hobby. Sorry for the misunderstanding John. The "@" symbol is used to alert or address the person whose CT name follows. Steve
What are your thoughts on examples whose plating is mostly worn away? Judging from the wear patterns, it looks like it was legitimately worn off and not just flaked off from a low-quality plating job. This one is just odd. It has a hand-carved reeded edge, but the surfaces are completely messed up. Was it plated originally and later removed by scraping/acid? Or was the plating job botched and all that was left was a ruined coin? Oh the eclectic nature of my collection...
