Full 'LIBERTY' with the I a little faded. no 'cents' on back. Also I picked up this beaut here: the seller thinks that its a MS-64/65 (he marked ms65 on the cardboard... but obviously is not an official grade) the seller said "Superb flashy white flawless coin with super relief both sides. tremendous luster, almost P/L. " - sorry but what does P/L mean? just looking to get some opinions... see if I got a bargain like I think I did. Thanks!
ahh makes sense now... thank you Jhonn! when I bought this V-Nickel , i'd never owned one... I didn't know which year was the first - worked out perfect that it happened to be the first 6months of minting this coin! I found this very very interesting story @ wikipedia: In early 1883, the Liberty Head nickel was first struck for circulation. The first 5.4 million pieces struck contained the Roman numeral V on the reverse, but did not contain the word "CENTS". Con Artists quickly noted this, as well as the fact that the coin was roughly the same size as a five-dollar gold coin, and began gold-plating the new nickels and attempting to pass them as gold pieces. According to numismatic legend, one of the perpetrators of this fraud was a deaf-mute named Josh Tatum, whose name is allegedly the origin of the verb "joshing". Supposedly, Tatum was not convicted because, being unable to speak, he did not actually make any fraudulent verbal claims regarding the coins, but merely accepted the change handed to him by the storekeeper. This tale, however, may be apocryphal. Whatever the truth of the case, what is known is that the Mint decided to add the word "CENTS" to the reverse design of the Liberty Head nickel in the middle of the 1883 striking, and this change remained until the coin was discontinued.
I'd say the Liberty nickel is about VF-20, at best. Thats worth about $10. For some reason the "without cents" is more common, even though it only had 1/3 the mintage figure of the "with cents", which is worth five or more times that of the no cents version. Go figure. Guy~
Thanks guys! Yeah that is very odd coleguy... I wonder why? more people held onto them because they knew they were discontinued so early on, perhaps?
Guy: actually the reasoning is rather simple. When the design was changed there was the usual rumors about government recalls and such. (As usual, the rumor was not true.) The design was quickly hoarded in large quantities and therefore is fairly common (and cheap) today.
p91: Hard to see the proof-like surfaces, but, if at all, it would seem that the obverse is more reflective than the reverse. But, it could be the pictures.
yeah the photographs do the coins no justice. I paid $5.00 for the v-nickel and $4 for the 54-S quarter from a nice person I've done business with on many occasians... From what I can tell that seems to be about half price! Originally I have just been into getting ounces of silver bullion, but I had the opportunity to buy these and I got the collectors bug in me now too.. I bought a 1997-S proof jackie robinson commemorative... these two coins and i've gotten a few morgan and peace dollars recently as well!
p91 here is an example of the gold plated V nickel I have. I have posted the pictures in some other threads but I will add them again for your thread. I inherited it from a Great Uncle who passed away over a year ago along with some other great coins and currency. Enjoy.
wow that is beautiful! thank you for sharing that. looks like it was done a long time ago. gets the wheels to spinnin
