1883 Nickel: 1-St Of 2 Have Arrived!

Very nice!

From Smithsonian Magazine:
A Brief History of the Racketeer Nickel

Nice looking example - alot of them have some of the plating wearing off.

And hence, now we likely know why 1883 had two types - No Cents and Cents.

Thanks for sharing, very interesting.

The problem with racketeer nickels is that they're hard to prove legit. Over the decades some unscrupulous people/businesses gold-plated 1883 V-nickel inventory so that they could move out the old inventory lying about just to make a few extra bucks. So, it's hard to tell what's real and what's not. Some believe that if there's no wear of the plating from the coin and it looks to good to be true that it's automatically one of the more recent coins gold-plated fake racketeer nickels.

I, personally, can't say either way. I don't know what the graders are looking for in their determination for authenticity. The V-nickels were heavily circulated during their time. Could some people have put some nice ones to the side and thus there are still some really nice ones today? Of course, they could have done that. But, that's the dilemma with the racketeer nickels.

I'd love to dig one up with a metal detector so I could tell myself I have a real one.....no doubts about it.

I hope you enjoy yours though. It looks nice. That grader of that coin knows more than I do on the subject. Btw. I believe it states "genuine" on the holder because it is not able to be graded due to the gold plating on the coin. Other third-party graders ( TPG) do similar on the holders when they can't give a numeric grade when asked.

I really enjoy the proof V-nickels; however, I recently picked up a Dansco V-nickel album on the cheap never used. I go to this coin show in MA that occurs every 3 - 4 months which falls on the 5th Sunday of a month when that happens to occur. There are a few dealers there that have from time to time some very nice raw V-nickels. I hope to pick a couple up soon.

The thing about the Racketeer nickels is that real ones would have been plated right after they came out so genuine ones would either be Uncirculated, uncirculated with light wear on the gold plating, or noticeable wear with no plating in the worn areas. The vast majority of "racketeer nickels" seen today are coins grading Good with the gold plating unbroken over the whole coin. These are clearly heavily worn coins plated recently and not coins plated in 1883 and worn down.

Good points.