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I once watched an interview featuring the renowned Numismatist Q. David Bowers. A reporter asked Mr. Bowers what coins he enjoyed speaking about most. He simply replied, "story coins." He then went on to bring up an example of the 1883 liberty head nickel, featuring the no cents reverse. While not a particularly rare coin, it certainly is a good story coin.
During the recent Stacks-Bowers rarity night sale, the Eliasberg 1913 Liberty Nickel was sold for $4,56 million. The winning bidders were Bruce Morelan and Legend Numismatics. This will be the second time Bruce has owned this famous coin, having previously sold the coin to Dr. Moron-Smith.
Hi everyone!
During the Heritage Long Beach auction, a 1910 PCGS PR68 Deep Cameo (CAC) realized $84,000. For my records, going back to 2001, this is the highest realized price. The previous high is the $74,750 realized on the Dale Friend 1885 in PCGS MS67 sold in 2006. This is excludes the sale of the 1913 as that is not a regular issued coin. There are some private transactions that also exceed this, but this is for auctions that I have records of. This is a beautiful coin. Will be interesting to see which set this ends up in.
At one time in your life you may have found yourself mesmerized from searching for and owning collectible coins. As you introspect into your heart you wonder whether your love for coins were an infatuation or a sincere love. The heart is very difficult thing to discern. The heart unlike the temperature outside does not always give you an accurate reading.
The 1913 Liberty Nickel is one that has been surrounded in mystery since it's discovery. There has only been 5 known to exist, 2 of them are in a museum and the other 3 are in a private collection. It is believed that five specimens were struck at the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia sometime between the Summer of 1912 and early February of 1913. One theory says that the coins were struck as advance test pieces around July of 1912, with the expectation that the series would continue the following year anyway. Another theory proposes that someone was burning the midnight oil at the Mint, and struck the five specimens before the dies were destroyed in preparation for the change to the Buffalo Nickel, which began production in late February of 1913. I do believe its possible that someone could find another one in a old bag of money or old collection. I also wonder how do they know these coins are real? It's possible that someone had made a 1913 die to counterfeitthe coin in there garage. But then later found out that they had changed to the buffalonickel and destroyed the die and the coins that they had not spent. But this is a really far fetched theory!
For years I have been working to get all of the auction catalogs that included a 1913 Liberty Nickel. I thought I was down to just the Farouk sale (The Palace Collections of Egypt), when I found out about a little mail bid sale from 1946 that included one. After years of looking for an affordable example of the Farouk catalog, I picked one of these up earlier this year. This only left the "Numismatic Fine Arts, Mail Bid Sale #2" catalog from 1946. The ANA has a copied so I borrowed it to check it out. It has a small listing and does have the coin imaged in the plates.
The 1913 Liberty Head Nickel is one of the most valuable coins in numismatics. A U.S. Mint employee, Samuel Brown is believed to have minted five 1913 Liberty Head Nickels and somehow got them out of the Mint. Around 1919, Samuel Brown still had possession of the nickels, but the public still did not know about the existence of these coins.
In looking through the full run of the Numismatist, I found this add in the April 1945 edition.I am curious of which coin this is. Since the ad speaks of the Olsen sale, I would think it is not that example.It may be the "Walton" coin as my pedigree shows Dr. Bolt acquired the coin in 1945.
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