Now, this one you'll find now and then with consistent coin show cherrypicking. One thing about 1883 NC Liberty Nickels is you'll always find a good supply of higher grade No Cents in dealer inventories.
When the "With Cents" went into production a lot of No Cents were saved - the thinking being they would become more valuable. Like the Buffalo Nickel Type II the opposite has come true, and the 1883 With Cents types are now more valuable - about 3.8 times more in MS-63. The moral to this kind of story is to "zig when everyone else is zagging".
The same can be said concerning negative talk about collecting Liberty Nickels. The No Cents is a good choice for new beginning Cherrypickers to start and concentrate on. You'll get lots of No Cents in hand and under the Loupe, and you'll find die varieties at most coin shows you attend. Don't get hung-up on what a die varierty is worth in dollars - think only in terms to rarity.
You'll make serial finds of some die varieties. However, the die variety starting this thread does not show-up very often. The one below is "findable" - Breen found it.
On one knows for sure how many obverse dies were used to mint the 5,474,300 No Cent Liberty Nickels, but 200 is likely incorrect - that would be only about 27,370 coins per die. Buffalo and Jefferson Nickels average about 200,000 coins per die. The Liberty Nickel with its new design was a vast improvement over the Shield Nickel average die life - thought to be only about 20,000. A 100,000 ADL estimate for the Liberty Nickel is probably conservative, and results in an estimate of 55 obverse dies for the 1883 No Cent Liberty Nickel.
