FREE: ~1889 LIBERTY "V" NICKEL - Over 123 Years Old~ FREE Shipping!

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~1889 LIBERTY "V" NICKEL - Over 123 Years Old~
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Liberty Head (V) nickels were officially minted from 1883 to 1912. However, an unknown mint official illegally produced an unknown quantity of V Nickels with the date 1913, with only five known genuine examples. V nickels were minted only at Philadelphia until 1912, when Denver and San Francisco each minted a small quantity. All five 1913 examples were minted in Philadelphia. The D or S mint mark is located on the reverse, just below the left-hand dot near the seven-o'-clock position on the rim.

The original 1883 issue lacked the word "cents" on the reverse. Since the nickels were the same size as five-dollar gold pieces, some counterfeiters plated them with gold and attempted to pass them off as such. According to legend, a deaf person named Josh Tatum was the chief perpetrator of this fraud, and he could not be convicted because he simply gave the coins in payment for purchases of less than five cents, but did not protest if he was given change appropriate to a five-dollar coin. There is no historical record of Tatum outside of numismatic folklore, however, so the story may well be apocryphal. The 1883 nickel is sometimes referred to as the "racketeer nickel".