Racketeer nickels are really interesting. I wonder how many of them are authentic racketeer nickels, and not modern repros. I am reading a book called "Carter Beats the Devil" by Glen David Gold for school. The main character had one of these nickels and explains the story of it. There are a bunch of other coin references, which makes it fun to read
The presentation supplied everything by pictures. He might have added the that the really sophisticated guys put reeded edges on the coins. Today it's hard to know if an 1883 No Cents Nickel was plated in 1883 or yesterday. The reeded edge makes this unusual counterfeit more "authentic." Would you confuse the piece shown above with this one?
No, but early in the year would you know whether or not they had changed the design of the half eagle? If you haven't seen any 1883 half eagles, and a "gold" coin of the right size with a redesigned Liberty head and a big V on the back came across your counter, you might just think it's a new design half eagle. The only thing that might make you question it would be the weight. It's almost 3.5 grams lighter than it should be.
