Good News1913 ‘fake’ nickel likely to fetch millions at auction
A 5-cent coin is expected to fetch at least $2.5 million when it goes up for auction on April 25 in Chicago.
The 1913 Liberty Head nickel is believed to be just one of five in existence.
"But it's the coin's back story that adds to its cachet," the Associated Press reports. "It was surreptitiously and illegally cast, discovered in a car wreck that killed its owner, declared a fake, forgotten in a closet for decades, and then found to be the real deal."
Four Virginia siblings, who held on to the coin even after it was deemed a fake, will equally split the auction money.
"The nickel made its debut in a most unusual way. It was struck at the Philadelphia mint in late 1912, the final year of its issue, but with the year 1913 cast on its face — the same year the beloved Buffalo Head nickel was introduced," the Associated Press reports.
Douglas Mudd, curator of the American Numismatic Association Money Museum in Colorado Springs, Colorado, said a mint worker named Samuel W. Brown is suspected of secretly producing a set of five Liberty Head coins dated 1913, the year in which there were no official Liberty Head nickels minted. Brown offered the five rare coins for sale at a Chicago convention in 1920, beyond the statute of limitations for his coin-date tinkering.
"Basically a coin with a story and a rarity will trump everything else," says Mudd, who believes the coin could bring in as much as $5 million next month.
Brown's coins were originally purchased together, but were divided up by the mid-'40s. A North Carolina collector, George O. Walton, purchased the coin now worth millions for $3,750. When he died in a car crash in 1962, the coin was found at the crash site.
One of his heirs, Melva Givens, was given the nickel after experts declared the coin a fake following suspicions about the altered date and an imperfection on the coin. Givens put the coin in an envelope and left it in her closet for 30 years.
When she died, a family attorney identified the coin as special. Soon after, a team of experts were comparing the discovered coin against the four other surviving 1913 Liberty nickels, each of which shared the same imperfection under the date.
"The sad part is my mother had it for 30 years and she didn't know it," Cheryl Myers, Melva Givens' daughter, says. "Knowing our mother, she probably would have invested it for us. She always put her children first."
Givens' four children allowed the American Numismatic Museum to display the coin for a decade prior to their decision to auction it off.
"This is a trophy item that sort of transcends the hobby," Imhof, the director of the auction house, says. "It's an interesting part of American history and there are collectors who look for something like this."
