The first Nickels were not worth five cents

In 1865, the United States Mint began producing nickel coins for the first time. Unlike the five cent coin that we know today, these had a value of three cents.

A first class postage stamp was three cents and that's what is often mentioned in conjunction with this coin. It's right to do so as that was a reason for choosing this denomination. The choice of nickel was because silver coins and copper cents had pretty much disappeared from circulation due to hoarding. Nickel is also harder and will last longer in circulation, though it did not hurt that the owner of a major nickel producing mine had deep political connections.

But leaving it there misses something important. We think of a postage stamp as something of little value, but three cents was not unimportant in 1865. A carpenter might have earned a dollar a day then, a farm worker would earn 30 cents or so - that three cent postage stamp may not have been a luxury but it certainly wasn't cheap!

And yes, people did call these nickels, although the 5 cent nickel came out in 1867, confusing that name.

Coinage of three cent nickels ended in 1889. Interestingly, a bill by Congressman R.J. Bulkley was introduced in 1912 to resurrect this denomination and possibly a half cent also. You can read all about that  at Coinage of a Three-cent Piece United States Congress House Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures - January 1, 1912.

Three cents still carried a lot of value in 1912. As Representative Bulkley pointed out:

In the first place it is believed that a great many articles are sold arbitrarily for 5 cents which could go for 3 cents if there were a convenient coin. Perhaps the most important example is in restaurant prices. Almost everything on the restaurant price list is a multiple of a nickel, yet in spite of that there are in the big cities a good many 3-cent lunches, in spite of the inconvenience of handling the pennies. I believe such a scale of prices would be appre ciably promoted by the existence of the 3-cent piece. I believe it would be a matter of convenience to merchants in making change, and, in some cases at least, would tend to cut down prices which are ordinarily given only in multiples of nickels.

Certain newspapers, particularly morning papers, which are unable to sell for 1 cent, are now obliged to get 5 cents because there is no convenient coin that the newsboys can handle. I have no doubt it would be a convenience to a good many newspapers, and that some of them that sell for a nickel would be glad to sell for 3 cents, if there were any convenient way of handling the change. The most important use of the 3-cent piece from my point of view, I am frank to say, is in payment of street-car fares. The city of Cleveland now has a universal 3-cent fare, and I believe it has come to stay, and 1 have brought a copy of the franchise here in case anybody wishes to look it over.

The proposal was for coins with a center hole to help distinguish them from other circulating coins.

Note: All my coins are in a safe deposit box. I keep nothing in my home.

Contests and giveaways: http://coins.aplawrence.com/2014/05/contests-and-giveaways.html

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The Henning Counterfeit Nickels

In 1954, a fellow named Francis Leroy Henning counterfeited several hundred thousand nickels dated 1939, 1944, 1946, 1947 and 1953.  That may seem like an odd coin counterfeit, but it wasn't quite as insane as it sounds because a nickel then had the same purchasing power as fifty cents or more would have today. Henning assumed that nobody would notice his fakes as they were only nickels.

He made a mistake in choosing 1944, though, because he wasn't aware that date should have a large mintmark on the reverse, even for Philadelphia minted coins (which carried no mintmark at that time). Henning's counterfeits had no mintmark.

If you find a 1944 nickel without a mintmark, it's a Henning counterfeit. Interestingly, although the FBI siezed what they could when they arrested Henning, they seem to be uninterested in these coins when they appear for sale today.

A diagnostic for Henning nickels of any date is a messed up "R" on the reverse.

However, Henning claimed to have made 6 reverse dies and 6 obverse dies. Not all have that screwy "R".   Some other clues are that a Henning may be overweight (significantly more than 5 grams), though not all are. Henning nickels are porous looking, lacking detail and may lack full rims. Some have raised dots inside the "M" of "UNUM"

Supposedly Henning branched out to other dates because when he took some of his first efforts to the bank, a teller commented that it was odd that all the dates were the same. Having the extra expense of more dies may have upset his profit margins; after conviction he is said to have claimed that he actually lost money overall.

He may have made a half million of these. When he learned that the FBI suspected him, he supposedly dumped his dies and some 200,000 coins in a river. The FBI only recovered 14,000.  Henning paid a $5,000 fine ($40,000 or so in today's money) and was sentenced to three years in prison (and apparently three more for counterfeiting five dollar bills!).

If he did make six obverse dies and they were different dates, we only know of five, so it is possible that another year could be discovered.  Any 1956 nickel you own might have been made from blanks seized at the time of his arrest, melted and reused by the Mint.

COUNTERFEITING CIRCULATING COINS

Dwight H. Stuckey The Counterfeit 1944 Jefferson Nickel
Henning Counterfeit Nickel
Henning Nickels
Definitive Tests for Henning Nickels

Note:  All my coins are in a safe deposit box.  I keep nothing in my home. 

Contests and giveaways: http://coins.aplawrence.com/2014/05/contests-and-giveaways.html

The American Numismatic Association's Numismatist Magazine

Way back in the 70's, I was a member of the ANA - the American Numismatic Association.  When my interest in coins rekindled this year, I joined again and was happy to see that the Numismatist magazine  is available online along with several years of back issues.

My happiness was short lived. As I read through the back issues, I became uncomfortable. Certainly some of the articles appeared to be authoritative and well researched. But others are obviously not, which makes me hesitant to accept anything published there as fact.

Although there were other examples I could point to, the one that caused me to actually groan was a retelling of the nonsensical story of "Josh Tatum" and gold plated 1883 No Cents nickels. It ended with a twist I hadn't heard before:

Josh Tatum's flirt with the Law gave birth to the phrase, "I'm just joshing you."

As any decent dictionary will tell you that "josh", meaning teasing or joking, has been in use for decades prior to 1883, that's plainly nonsense.  The rest of the story is too: there are no police records or newspaper reports of any Josh Tatum attempting to pass gold plated nickels as a deaf mute or otherwise. In fact, the story seems to have been made up in the 1960's.  Plainly there is no fact checking at the Numismatist!

Interestingly, someone rehashed that story at a coin forum I frequent. When I pointed out the facts, he retorted that it was "just a coin related story I found amusing and thought others might as well".

Yes, amusing. Untrue, but amusing. Shall I send in an equally amusing story concerning how my grandfather stole a hat from Victor D. Brenner in 1909? I promise you, it's a worthy tale and it explains where the phrase "I'll eat my hat!" came from.  None of it's true, but hey, it's  a coin related story I found amusing and I thought others might as well!

If it were not for the discount coin insurance, I would not be renewing my ANA subscription next year. Even at that, I may not.

Note:  All my coins are in a safe deposit box.  I keep nothing in my home. 

Contests and giveaways: http://coins.aplawrence.com/2014/05/contests-and-giveaways.html

A Fine Eye for Detail

I really don't know how I bought this coin without being more aware of the carbon mark on the obverse.

I certainly SAW it.  But somehow it just didn't register with my brain as undesirable.  I think perhaps I was entranced by the reverse, which has nice detail - better than some MS66's I've seen selling for $1,000.00, give or take.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I generally do not notice detail. The other day we were with my daughter and her husband and were walking by a river.  We were standing staring down at the river and everyone was making appreciative noises. I looked and saw flowing water, which is what I thought they were all admiring.  It turns out that this river is one where herring run at this time of year and the water was absolutely choked with them. I just didn't notice!

So, I'm a "big picture" guy.  That's probably from having very poor eyesight that was not corrected until I was well into my school years - I imagine my brain never learned to process details well because I couldn't see them. Whatever the reason, I know I can easily miss things.

Someday I'd like to buy a better Type I Buffalo.  I like the design and don't care that much about Type II.  I'll need to force myself to look carefully, though.

Note:  All my coins are in a safe deposit box.  I keep nothing in my home. 

Contests and giveaways: http://coins.aplawrence.com/2014/05/contests-and-giveaways.html

Lamination Errors

Sigh.

When I was a young boy, "war time" nickels were still in circulation.  I don't mean you'd find one once in a while, I mean that you could find as many as you wanted.  At one time I had rolls and rolls of them, and "errors" like the one shown below were very common.

I put "errors" in quotes because I never thought of them as errors - I thought of them as defects, and wouldn't even think of putting those in a holder to be kept.  I'm sure there were plenty of these in the rolls I saved, but I sold all those for their silver content somewhere along the line.

I'm surprised to see that ANACS and NGC certify lamination errors and even more surprised by the prices!  Eighty nine dollars?  Are you kidding me?

Oh, well.  I missed the boat on those, for sure!

Note:  All my coins are in a safe deposit box.  I keep nothing in my home. 

This week's Coinweek Giveaway: http://www.coinweek.com/~cd53675ce0bee42

Also multiple contests going on at http://www.moderncoinmart.com/forum/forums/contests/

Tare Weight of PCGS Slabs/AWS-100 Digital Scale

I bought this AWS-100 scale from Amazon  last week because I thought it might sometimes be helpful for counterfeit detection.  It's light and small enough to carry in your pocket and supposedly is accurate to 100th of a gram.

I'm not too  sure about that.  Take a look at these sequential photographs of weighing a nickel on this scale.  A nickel should weigh 5.00 grams.  On each weigh, I turned the scale off, counted to 10, turned it on and counted to 10 again before putting the nickel on the scale.  You can see that the results varied quite a bit.

I've also seen 4.96 and everything in between all the way to 5.03.  If that is good enough for what you are trying to do, that's fine. For example, if you were weighing gold at $1,300 an ounce, you could be off by as much as $1.80 or so.  That's not much, though it could matter to you.  Based on my testing, you could cut that margin of error with repeated weighings, so that might help too.

This might certainly be enough to spot a raw coin of improper weight.  It won't help much if the coin is in a slab, though.   I wondered if it would be possible to determine the tare weight of a slab and thereby know the weight of the coin inside without breaking it open.

Of course, you first have to know what slab you are looking at. In examining my coins, I found at least half a dozen types and each would have its own empty weigh. In addition to that, some of the styles use plastic fingers to hold the coin - a smaller coin would use more plastic, so you'd also need to account for that.

Unfortunately, the variances in what appear to be identical slabs can be high.  These two have a .2 gram difference

36.20 g

36.00 g

The next two I tried were a different style and here the difference was only .09 g, but it's obvious that you cannot expect to accurately determine the weight of a slabbed coin this way.

35.70 g

35.61 g

Given the difficulty of even getting repeatable weights, I'd say this idea is hopeless.

Note:  All my coins are in a safe deposit box.  I keep nothing in my home. 

This week's Coinweek Giveaway: http://www.coinweek.com/~cd535e2d686a500

Also multiple contests going on at http://www.moderncoinmart.com/forum/forums/contests/

Dump the penny (and the nickel and maybe the dime and quarter)

Canada has stopped producing pennies and there is some talk of doing the same here. The major objection against doing so seems to be that we've always had a one cent coin, so dropping it destroys a hallowed tradition.

I think that's silly.  The cent has become so worthless that it truly is nonsense to keep it.  I think the nickel and even the dime have reached that point also.

Let's look at some history here.  In 1800, we had cents and half cents - nothing smaller.    At that time, a skilled workman like a carpenter or a bricklayer earned a dollar to a dollar and a half per day.   By that measure, 200 or so of the lowest value coin available (the half cent) would have paid their wages.

Would you like 200 cents as your daily income now?  How about 200 nickels or even 200 dimes? Even 200 quarters is less than minimum wage!

Given that nothing else circulates to any real extent today, we could actually get rid of all coins and suffer no more than our ancestors.

Well, that's probably too much breakage of tradition and as a coin collector, I wouldn't really like that. But I wouldn't mind having resized half dollars, dollars and even five dollar coins to replace them.

Yes, the vending machine industry would howl.  If we'd had vending machines in the mid 1800's, they would have screamed when we dumped the half cents and shrunk the cent.  They might have even had a point then, as purely mechanical devices are hard to refit for new coins.   I don't know that modern vending machines take full advantage advantage of computer technology now, but they certainly could and as the useless value coins would be phases out slowly (just stop making them and let them drain away), I don't think they'd suffer much either.

This organization wants to keep cents circulating: http://www.pennies.org/.  They say

Consumers benefit with a low denomination coin, with the penny helping keep high prices in check for millions of America's hardworking families.

But eliminating low value coins only affects cash transactions - credit cards and checks could still be used for exact amounts.

Here's some links of interest:

Wages, 1800 to 1809
Value of one cent in 1800
Multidrop Bus in Vending Machines

Coin Collecting and Genealogy Part III - Nickel Coins

See Coin Collecting and Genealogy for the first of this series.

Note:  Everything is in a safe deposit box.  I keep nothing in my home. 

Three Cent Nickel

Although I cannot remember the date, this replacement 3 cent piece is of the same condition as the original.

These coins were the first "nickels".  Most of us think of nickels as five cents, but those came later.  Three cents was the price of a postage stamp in these times, change was still scarce, so these were issued to help.









Shield Nickel




Again, I can't remember the date, but the one I bought will do.

I think the "With Rays" version of this is ugly.  I like this style better.

Liberty Head or "V Nickels"

 The initial issue of these in 1883 did not have "CENTS" on the reverse.  That's the version that was in the original collection and it was every bit as nice as this replacement. 

They say that people gold plated these and passed them as Five Dollar Gold pieces and therefor these are sometimes called "Racketeer nickels".

I doubt that happened often. People were familiar with gold coins and the weight difference would have been very noticeable.  Also, $5.00 was a fairly large amount of money then - at least $100 or more in today's money.  Few people take a hundred dollar bill today without looking at it and I'm sure most wouldn't have been fooled then.  See "JOSH TATUM RACKETEER NICKEL REFERENCES PRIOR TO 1968" also.




Additions

That was all there was in the original collection.  

Buffalo Nickels

As a young child, I found a very nice 1913 "Type 1" Buffalo. The one I bought is only slightly nicer.  

I've also added the last year of issue, 1938.

It was very easy to find Buffalo's in change when I was a boy.








Jefferson Nickels

Supposedly this is the "most collected" U.S. Coin.  It's nice that you can still find all but the most difficult dates in circulation.  I even got a very worn 40% silver "war nickel" in change recently.

When I was a boy, those silver nickels were very easy to find, even in high grades.  

Interestingly, many that I found then had lamination errors, where particularly the reverse would be peeling off.  Today, some collectors pay a premium for coins I threw back into circulation as "damaged"!