Looking To Complete Your Liberty Head Nickel Set?

Go look at all of the top dollar coins that have sold on Heritage. Every single one of the coins that sold in the 2-3 million dollar range were in PCGS or NGC slabs. According to RedBook the highest grade 1913 Nickel is "PF66" implying that it, too, has been professionally authenticated and graded.

I understand what you're saying about the magnitude of the coin being above and beyond a slab. But apparently it's not completely out of line as one might think.

I do agree that the CAC sticker is pretty absurd, though.

The two 1913 Liberty nickels that are currently on display in the
ANA Money Museum in Colorado Springs, CO are not encased in slabs.

I should know, I saw them in person last Tuesday!

Included in the display was a complete list of who has owned all five
of the 1913 Liberty nickels, since Samuel Brown's 'set' was broken up
in the 1940's.

The 'Walton' specimen is on loan to the museum, and the 'McDermott'
specimen is now a part of the museum's permanent collection.

The Olsen 'Hawaii 5-0' Specimen is the 'token' that Heritage is auctioning.

I don't think Heritage is interested in playing games with people that would do things like that. My guess is that on the big ticket items that they independently authenticate the coin anyway. Even a $2 million dollar coin is only 0.3% of the value of their auctions over the course of the year (they report $700 million in auctions last year), so they may figure that it would do more harm than good to let someone break the rules as then everyone would want to do it. Anyway, that scenario is so unlikely to occur that I can't imagine it ever happening.

I wonder how much the slab itself would be worth, I'm sure it would have collectable value even without the coin in it.

-XoG

I think one of the reasons these are graded is because even though they were 5 of them, each one that had these five wanted theirs to be the best of the 5 and no matter what they thought they didn't have a chance of proving it unless it was graded by a third party. Another reason is there is only 5 of these known to exist and without authentication there would be no way to prove the one you has was real. The CAC sticker is worthless in my opinion, because everyone knows which one is the best of the 5 and everyone knows who has owned each and everyone of them and all have their own merits just on that fact. So the CAC sticker on any of the 1913 nickels is pretty redundant

Captainkurt,

From the looks of it that buyer hasn't left feedback yet (correct me if I'm wrong). I see someone left feedback on Dec. 21 for a similar lot, but he only paid $49 for it. This one sold for $650! I can't imagine the buyer really meant to pay that much for just a box, but who knows. The seller is very clear that no coin is included so any mistake is completely on the buyer's end.

I'm usually a fan of OGP, but not when you could buy a gold coin for
what those boxes went for!

Great idea, Xavier! Now I can justify buying an
MS-67 1893-S Morgan.

I'll just crack it out every two months, and send it to PCGS and NGC
on an alternating basis (and maybe ANACS once every two years or so).

Who wouldn't want a top-tier TPG MS-67 '1893-S' Morgan slab?!