1913 Liberty Nickel

I am sure I can Google this question, but I prefer asking my buddies here..... This weekend I will attend a coin show that has a 1913 Liberty nickel on display. This was a magical coin to me when I was a kid. I had my Whitman Liberty nickel book with several well worn nickels and always marveled at that one space that Whitman was kind enough to plug with a cardboard disk for me.. The 1913 space.... That just made that coin almost as magical in my kid brain as Dragons and space flight.

As I understand it, the 1913 is not a legitimate US mint issue. So were these five examples struck covertly by mint employees horsing around or just what is the origin story of the 1913 Liberty nickel?

 

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Cool. I got to see one once.


Read the info in the 1st picture.

 

How long ago was that, Ed?

 

SOMEBODY had to design a Liberty die with the 1913 date....it's not something a secretary or janitor could produce.

They should have known who worked on dies and had the technical capabilities to create an obverse/reverse for a coin.

Plus, they must have been struck separately since so few were made. Who had the capability to run the press ?

 

Worlds Fair of Money held in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. Before the pandemic. I know I have a thread about it.

There were 2 security guards watching it!

 

I just wondered why it wasn't in a TPG slab!

 

The mint always had to be prepared. 1907-1916 was kind of a mess, with approvals coming last second or last second not coming at all. I never blamed the mint for having 1913 dated dies made, since who knew if the proposed new design would get approved. So I always accepted and understood that the dies were made properly. Now, the striking of those dies...must have been someone fairly high up to be able to check out the dies and then run them. That is the nefarious part of this story.

 

With the 1933 Double Eagles, once made, it's pretty "easy" to sneak a few out if in fact that happened.

A die with the "1913" date and the Liberty image had to be created (very few people could do that)....inserted on the mint press (few people again)....then struck on blanks (few again).

If they wanted to find the culprit, it should have been a pretty small number of people to question, no ?

 

I buy into the concept that the mint made a 1913 dated die as a back-up in case the new Buffalo Nickel design happened to fall through. For example, the mint issued Indian Cents from two mints in 1909 before they got around to introducing the Lincoln Cent.

I have a problem with the fact that Samuel Brown was able to profit from what was obviously an illegally made coin. He ran the ad in The Numismatist to create a market for the coin and then he sold all five of them plus a pattern or two of the new Buffalo Nickel.

Others, like those who bought 1933 double eagles thinking that those coins were legal to own, got burned. Those coins were legally made, but the government argued that they are illegally distributed. The 1913 Liberty Nickel was made illegally and distributed illegally, but there was no blow back for Brown or the subsequent owners.

And in case you haven't guess, the 1913 Liberty Nickel is my least favorite great rarity. If I owned one, I'd sell it and buy many "real coins."

 

I assume there was nobody in an appropriate position of power who wanted to stir things up.

 

I agree. Btw as an aside I believe it was one copper trial of the buffalo, since I thought I remember Col Green having a custom holder with six holes, five 1913 LH and one copper buffalo. That is where the confusion of whether there were 5 or 6 1913 LH nickels came from.

Anyway, agree completely. 1933s were struck properly but not had made it to the desk where they sold current coins yet, so were not legally distributed, (unlike the eagles, which were delivered a few days to the desk before the gold recall). I personally also detest the 1913 LH nickel, and don't care for other things like the 1804 silver dollars. I like COINS, a metal object made contemporaneously for commerce. Fantasy issues like the 1804 silver dollar, illegal issues like the 1913 LH nickel, (and the 1884 and 1885 Trade dollars), mean nothing to me.

 

I have no problem with the 1804 "Original" silver dollars. They were first made for diplomatic purposes, and a few more were made at the same time.

I have no use for the so-called "Restrike" varieties, which were nothing of the sort. The worst example is in the Smithsonian collection. It was struck over a Swiss coin and was probably one of the confiscated after crooked mint employees made some 1804 dollars in their "midnight mint" operation and fenced the coins to Philadelphia dealers.

 

True, but a high-ranking Treasury official (name escapes me) was quoted in numismatic journals in the 1950's and 1960's stating that he felt the Treasury/Mint/govt had the right to seize those nickels and/or other "illegal" coins/patterns.

 

Those 1933's were struck on March 2nd, not mid-March as thought.

There was never an explicit anti-1933 distribution notice given out. All the memorandums of March/April 1933 dealt with payment of gold for currency. Gold-for-gold was still legit and that's why the big stink over a few coins being swapped out seems like overkill.

It had to do more with the anti-gold policies of FDR, IMO, than an anti-1933 Double Eagle policy.

 

I agree with this sentiment and others about the 1804 restrikes and 1933 DEs. These are not authorized "coins" and while rare, are outside the normal collecting boundaries. I don't care if someone wants to spend millions on them but I'm not envious. While I might walk across the aisle to see one at a coin show, I wouldn't really go out of my way to see one.

Reminds me of the Ike with two Lincolns overstruck shown in another thread recently. Not an error as we generally understand one, unless one believes that illegally struck coins are an "error" of the criminal justice system.

 

To me there's really no mystery or conspiracy involving the dies. Philadelphia typically shipped dies for the coming year in early-mid December - numerous dies shipped/received letters in the mint records during the early 1900s attest to this pattern. The controversy surrounding the new design instigated by Hobbs Manufacturing Company (maker of a slug detector) started in July 1912 and continued into mid February 1913. The new design wasn't officially approved until Dec 18, 1912, and experimental pieces weren't struck until Jan 7, 1913. After a meeting involving lawyers from both sides on Feb 14, the Hobbs "much ado about nothing" was finally put to rest, and production of the Buffalo nickel began on Feb 18. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_nickel)

With all that going on, 1913 V nickel dies were undoubtedly already manufactured in December 1912. The new design wasn't even approved until Dec 18! I can picture Barber going, "I'm not waiting around for this, I got coins to produce." I don't know all the research around the 1913 V nickel but I can speculate that there may have even been a production run in January 1913 and they were quietly ordered destroyed (given all the hassle with Hobbs). How 5 of them got out is the unknown, not the dies.

 

Agree. From what I read it's about when the coins were delivered to the coin counter, so legally distributed. That is what declares eagles legal and double eagles illegal.

 

I'm unfamiliar with the production and coiner (coin desk) receipt of Indian $10 pieces and their timeline. We do know that because about 5 of the Eagles were LEGALLY recorded on the ledger that they can't confiscate the 35-40 outstanding today because they don't know which ones are "legal" and which are "illegal."

In theory, if 1 $20 Saint 1933 had been written on the ledger, all the rest confiscated from 1947 on would have been OK since you couldn't tell which was which.

 

Here is a source for the dates of the start of the Buffalo nickel, from the daily coinage records, found here https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/book/542742.

I'm intrigued by the use of "recoinage" for the first $40,000 worth of Buffaloes - "the act or process of coining money again or making new coinage." The word seems to most often be associated with melting and recoining, or replacing existing coins such as during the Great Recoinage of 1696. If you scroll forward in the above link to May 1913 when the Type 1 Buffalo was replaced with Type 2, the mint doesn't use "recoinage", they say "coinage of second variety began." Why then did they use recoinage in February? The word derives from "recoin" which means to coin again, and some definitions link to "remint" - to melt down and make new coin. So one could interpret that as "we already made some." In what other context did the mint use that word?

Fun to think they may have made 200,000 1913 V nickels and then melted them, isn't it? I'm sure there must be better research surrounding this; just thought it was entertaining to speculate.

https://ia600106.us.archive.org/Boo...73_0038.jp2&id=Rg104Entry273&scale=1&rotate=0

 

When dies were shipped (from Philly), must have been under heavy security, right ?

I'm sure they didn't send them US Mail or Pony Express !