I have this 1883 no cents liberty nickel that has been gold plated. Although it is holed, I bough it as a historical piece and I would like to know if it is an orginal racketeer nickel or just a damaged coin.
That doesn't make it a fake, but I did some reading and some of the high end ones did have hand reeded edges, so it doesn't eliminate the chances, but IMO they are all damaged coins.
I would say both. Obvi it is damaged but could very easily be an original Racketeer nickel since there were so many.
About 50 years ago some coin guys were still plating those and selling them as collectibles. I imagine there are many, many more gold plated ones today than there were back in 1883. It seems to be the counterfeit and keeps on being counterfeited. They are neat to have, but, like mine, I really doubt if it was plated in 1883. More likely around 1958 ? lol Seriously, I don;t know any way to be able to tell when it was plated exactly or how to determine if it is an authentic "racketeer" ? Maybe someone who knows can tell us ?
I just had this discussion a couple weeks ago. I was at the local flea market (weekly thing) and a vendor had a racketeer nickel similar to this one (same company, little different package): http://americanhistoricsociety.com/products/"Racketeer"-Gold%2dPlated-Nickel.html I picked it up for $10, as I've wanted one to add to my set, simply because I think it's a cool story. I discussed this same topic (original, or plated later) with both the guy I bought it from, and one of the other guys I usually deal with. My guess, this was plated later, but both said there is really no way to tell when the plating was added to any of these.
When the real ones were plated they were Mint State. An original that is less than Mint State should have the plating missing in the worn areas. Later ones made to sell to collectors 50 years ago like 10gary22 mentions most likely would not have selected Mint State coins to plate.
