Saga Of The 1913 Liberty Nickel

Last evening I happened to catch a program on the History Channel with Danny Trejo. There was a short segment on the 1913 Liberty nickel. They claim that a rogue mint employee decided to strike 5 of the 1913 coins for sale on the black market. Four of the coins had been accounted for but one remained unknown. Fast forward to the 1950's and a collector named Walton purchased the missing one for about $3700 for his personal collection. In the early 1960's Walton was driving down a rain swept roadway in North Carolina enroute to a coin convention when he had a head on collision with another driver and perished in the accident. When Police arrived on the scene there was wreckage and glass all over the road as well as a large amount of collector coins, one of them being the 1913 nickel. The coins were returned to his family. They had so called experts look at the nickel and they declared it a forgery so the family just stuffed it away in a drawer for decades. After reading some articles about the elusive coin they decided to have a second look at it. Experts at Sotheby's compared it to the example in the Smithsonian and declared that the coin was indeed genuine. It was auctioned and hammered at somewhere in the area of $3 million.