Josh Tatum, a young man in the 1880’s gold plated a number of the new five cent nickels. The design was very similar to the current $5.00 gold coins already in circulation. The new nickels only had the Roman numeral “V” on the reverse. As a result of his gold plating he would enter a store and pay with the plated nickel. Merchants that didn’t look closely would give him change for $5.00 plus his purchases. A short time later he was caught, arrested and charged. At his trial he was found innocent of all charges. Josh Tatum was deaf and dumb. He never made any claims that he was giving them a $5.00 coin. The person accepting the coin made the assumption that it was. Therefore he was released. Here is a higher grade AU coin that I recently obtained. There are nice die cracks on both sides of the coin. The coins details are very strong. After this all came to light the mint added the words “FIVE CENTS” on the reverse later that same year.
How can you be certain it's a contemporary racketeer nickel from 1883? Couldn't it have been gold plated anytime during the last 139 years?
Yes but that question can be applied to an extremely large number of coins. Given the coins and the plating conditions I’ll go with it’s the real thing.
There are more altered examples of this coin than genuine pieces. Most of them for sale do not have reeded edges. Many of the coins WITH edge reeding are also fakes. Very often these are passed as OK. If you've bought one of these with edge reeding after 1980 you best have it certified. PS If the plating is as nice as on the OP's coin....
I'm curious, how/what did you check? We received some of these back in the 1970s to authenticate. I'd like to see an image of the edge on your coin.
Watching a metal detecting program on TV years ago. They were going to detect the foundation of an old west saloon. One of the coins they recovered was a partially gold plated V-nickel.
The problem with these is that unless you have solid documentation, there is no way to distinguish a contemporary issue from something that was plated yesterday. Gold plating is not difficult. As far as I know, there isn't a reliable way to determine when these coins were plated (please let me know if I'm wrong). That's why all gold plated 1883 nickels should be considered suspect. There's nothing wrong with adding one to your collection, as it's part of a cool story, but to claim you have an authentic contemporary plated coin that checks out, well that may be a significant stretch. @Insider how would you authenticate a coin like this as contemporary? It seems that reeding and plating could have been added to a 1883 NC anytime in the last 140 years. I can see where you would be able to say it's a modern example, but to prove it's contemprary? How? Documentation?
I believe it can be done to over 90% accuracy by any old timer with the right tools and some additional diagnostics that should be obvious to anyone who thinks about it. Any percent that get by might as well be considered genuine. It's like a counterfeit being slabbed by a TPGS because it was so good it defied detection. These errors should increase exponentially in the future.
That would be a good argument for coins being retained in older slabs rather than cracking them out and resubmitting in hopes of a better grade.
Fortunately, the diagnostics of the newly discovered fakes are visible in a slab. When certified counterfeits are identified later, they are either sent back due to the guarantee, cracked out to be resold, put into a "Black Collection," or kept in the slab as a collectible.
Interesting story all around. But, the most interesting aspect to me is the reality that, at that time, our gold coins were used for commerce at face value. Seems strange now
