By Brian Edwards The Liberty Head Nickel came in with a bang and left with a bigger bang. When Charles Barber designed the coin as a replacement for the Shield Nickel he placed a large Roman numeral V on the reverse of the coin to represent five cents. Because the coin was roughly the same size as the five dollar gold piece a whole group of enterprising crooks began gold plating the coin and passing them off as five dollar gold pieces. The coin was quickly redesigned and the word "cents" was added to the reverse, thus ending a very profitable business for the criminal class. Production was fairly steady for the rest of the production run. The series was officially ended in 1912 to make way for the Buffalo Nickel. However, an enterprising mint employee struck five 1913 proof coins with a master die and then slipped them out of the mint. The coins first appeared to in numismatic circles in 1920. However, it is interesting to note that the coin collecting community was not even aware of the coins until a dealer named Samual W. Brown place an ad offering to buy any proof examples in the December 1919 issue of the ANA journal "Numismatist". Then during the ANA convention in 1920 he offered to pay $600 dollars for all examples. Since he actually owned all five specimens, this was just a way to build speculation and establish a market value for the coins. This was enough to create a stir among coin collectors but it took another enterprising coin dealer to make this one of the most famous coins in America. Coin dealer B. Max Mehl begain one million dollar advertising campaign nation wide in 1930 that offered $50 for every 1913 Liberty Nickel sent to him. This created a sensation and people around the country began searching for the elusive nickel. The nation was in the early stages of the Great Depression and fifty dollars was a great deal of money. The real intent of Mehl's campaign was peddling his "Star Rare Coin Encyclopedia." Mehl never did purchase a 1913 Nickel but he did manage to produce and sell 30 editions of his encyclopedia and became very rich in the process. Today, two of the coins reside in museums , one in the Smithsonian Institution, and one in the American Numismatic Association's Money Museum The other three are in private collections. The finest known specimen sold for $1,840,000 in a 1996 auction, and later resold for $4,150,000 in 2005. The "Olsen specimen", famous for having been featured on an episode of Hawaii Five-O, brought $3,000,000 when it was auctioned in 2003. Type Information The general type coin collector will normally obtain one example of the Liberty Nickel. For the specialized type coin collector two major varieties of the Liberty Nickels were minted, one without the word "cents" one the reverse and the other with cents added. The first variety was minted in 1883 and the with cents coin produced from 1883 until 1913. Collector Points With the exception of 1912, all Liberty Nickels were produced at the Philadelphia mint. The three are low-mintage issues were produced in 1885, 1886 and 1912-S-but there are no great rarities. The 1912-S, at 238,000, is the only coin with a mintage below a million. Proofs were struck every year and at relatively high mintages for the period. Because of a better design, the "V" nickels are well struck. Because of this collectors should avoid weakly stuck coins. There good quantities of well struck coins available. Investor Information The Liberty Nickels are well known among collectors because of the "no cents" version and the highly hyped 1913 edition. However, they are still mostly collected by type collectors. Well preserved examples are readily available and prices don't increase dramatically until they higher end on the mint state and proof state scales. Finally, although the "no cents" variety was only minted for part of the first year of production it was saved in large quantities by the public. As a result, they are relatively common in the higher grades. This is great for collectors but not so great for investors. Visit www.uscoinfacts.com for a wealth of data about US Coins. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Brian_Edwards http://EzineArticles.com/?Liberty-Head-Nickels---Coins-For-The-Collector&id=376519 buy xanax online
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