The 1913 Liberty Nickel

In December 1919, an odd advertisement appeared in The Numismatist.   The advertiser was offering $500 for a 1913 Liberty Head nickel, quite a princely sum for such a recent coin.   Coin collectors were surprised and intrigued: 1913 was the first year of the Buffalo Nickel — and 1912 was the last year of the Liberty Head Nickel.   According to U.S. Mint records, the 1913 nickel didn’t exist, but somebody had an inkling that some had been minted.

The next year, that advertiser, Samuel W Brown, presented his treasure at the 1920 American Numismatic Association show.   Brown showed five 1913 Liberty Head Nickels, two with a proof finish and the other three with the usual finish.  Despite the Mint’s denial that the coins were ever minted, they were determined to be the real thing, and the combined collection of five nickels became renowned in their rarity.   No other 1913 Liberty Head nickels were ever found.

Brown sold the collection of five coins, and for a time they passed through various collectors’ and dealers’ hands, until they ended up in the collection of Colonel E.H.R. Green.  Upon Green’s death, the coins were bought by a pair of dealers, who split up the set of five, and each coin is now known by its owner’s name.   The finest of the five is the Eliasberg Specimen, one of the two with proof finish, and has been professionally graded at PR-66, or one of the highest uncirculated grades.  It is reported the Eliasberg Specimen was most recently sold in 2007 for $5 million.  The other proof nickel, the Olsen Specimen, appeared in an episode of Hawaii Five-O, and most recently sold in 2004 for $3 million.  The Olsen Specimen has been put up for auction next year, so if you’ve got enough spare change lying around, you could put in a bid – but expect it to sell for much, much more than the Eliasberg nickel cost two years ago.    The finest of the non-proof nickels is the Norweb Specimen, which currently resides in the Smithsonian.

Because the five nickels were so well-renowned from the start, you might assume that all five would have lived in the princely care of King Farouk or the Smithsonian their entire lives, but the remaining two of the five 1913 Liberty Head Nickels managed to fit a little adventure into their storied lives.    One of the coins is considered in ‘circulated’ condition, something that doesn’t usually happen to such a rare specimen.   That coin, the McDermott Specimen, was carried around by J.V. McDermott in his pocket, mingling with the rest of the common change.   McDermott would produce the coin and proclaim its rarity for the entertainment of himself and those around him, but the constant handling had its toll on the coin.    Its rarity was not changed, and wiser heads eventually placed it in a museum.

The fifth coin, the Walton Specimen, was believed lost.  Its owner, George Walton, was killed in a car accident en route to show his collection at an event.   The coins were scattered along the road, and nearly all were recovered.   Walton was transporting both the 1913 Liberty Head Nickel, and a display duplicate…but only one 1913 was found.   Initially, it was believed that the recovered coin was the reproduction and so it was placed in storage.  In 2003, knowing that a fifth nickel remained, a reward was offered for anyone who could produce the missing fifth 1913 Liberty Head.   Seeing an opportunity, Walton’s estate brought the ‘reproduction’ forward, and expert analysis proved it was the actual coin.   Due to its hiatus from the limelight, the Walton Specimen is the only coin to never have been re-sold since the collection was split up.

All five coins have been found and documented, but one piece of information is still missing – how the coins came to exist to begin with.  The largest clue comes from the first owner of the five coins: Samuel Brown.   In 1913, Brown had a nice government job, a position in the coining office of the U.S. Mint.   As 1912 came to a close, the Buffalo Nickel had been designed and was planned on being minted, but setbacks threatened to push the production of the Buffalo Nickel into the future, so it is highly likely that dies for a 1913 Liberty Head nickel had been produced in case production had to start with the previous coin design.  As we’ve seen in the past, lax Mint rules on custom coins resulted  in coins being produced when they shouldn’t have.   Another possibility is that the five were test runs for the Mint’s records or simply to test the dies.   Because no evidence of the coins’ existence before ending up in Brown’s possession, despite their obvious rarity, most evidence points towards Brown being their first owner and the advertisement in The Numismatist was a marketing ploy.  His ploy worked, and ninety years later these coins remain some of the most valuable and well-documented coin rarities known today.