History of 1913 Liberty Head Nickel Explored
Editor’s Note: For nearly 70 years, the feature-rich pages of Coins magazine, Numismatic News’ venerable sister publication, have tracked the history, fun and the growth of this great hobby, while also attracting new collectors to pursue what was once deemed the “hobby of kings.” Dusting off these time-aged issues, from the early 1960s and beyond, each installment of “Past Times with Coins,” written by its former longtime editor, explores what nuggets of interest they contain.
The December 1963 issue of Coins magazine took a look at one of the great rarities in U.S. coinage, the 1913 Liberty Head nickel, in a story by Henry Travis. 1913 was the year of the changeover from the Liberty Head design by Charles Barber to the Indian Head design by James Earle Fraser. No 1913 Liberty Head nickels should exist, but five do and bring millions today when offered for sale. Two of the five are held in museums.
“The 1913 Liberty Head nickel continues to be one of the most controversial coins ever struck ...” Travis wrote. “The coin was not a regular mint issue and was never placed in circulation. In fact, the mint has no record of such a coin ever being produced, although it is strongly believed that it was struck at the Philadelphia Mint.
“Only five ‘authentic’ 1913 Libertys are known to exist and it is a matter of almost public record who the five owners are. One of the owners reputedly turned down $50,000 for his specimen.
“It is doubtful if any United States coin had received as much publicity as the 1913 Liberty, save perhaps the 1804 silver dollar.
“The history of these pieces is a most curious one, for none of them were known until 1919. At that time a Samuel W. Brown of North Tonawanda, N.Y., placed a small advertisement in ‘The Numismatist’ offering to pay $500 each for such a coin.” Thus, as Travis related, goes the traditional story of how the 1913 Liberty Head nickel first came to the hobby’s attention. But it wasn’t so, as I have written before. The first currently known appearance of the 1913 Liberty Head nickel was at a Chicago Coin Club meeting on Dec. 3, 1919, prior to Brown’s ad in The Numismatist even appearing in print.
For a complete telling of this side of the story, see my articles in Numismatic News ( Aug. 1, 2017; Sept. 29 and Oct. 13, 2020), which are available online at www.numismaticnews.net. There, I provided contemporary evidence that Brown attended the Dec. 3, 1919, meeting of the Chicago Coin Club with at least one of the nickels in his possession.
The December 1919 issue of The Numismatist, which contained his first advertisement, was printed on Dec. 1 (two days prior to that meeting) but didn’t get mailed most likely until Dec. 5 and wasn’t received by American Numismatic Association members for several days and even weeks later. So the hobby’s first knowledge of this rarity was prior to Brown’s ad, and the first currently known physical showing was Dec. 3, 1919, not the much-later August 1920 Chicago ANA convention as most writers have related.
Why is this of importance? I’ll get to that later.
“Don Taxay, author of ‘Counterfeit, Mis-struck and Unofficial U.S. Coins’ (Arco Publishing Co., Inc., New York, 1963), is one of the latest numismatic writers to ‘expose’ the coin’s misty and questionable background,” Travis wrote in his Coins article.
Taxay wrote, “In December 1919, a small advertisement appeared in The Numismatist magazine offering to buy [for $500 each] … 1913 Liberty Head nickels. What a strange request! ... In January, 1920, Brown ‘upped the ante” to $600, and with this figure the advertisement was repeated through March of that year. Four months later, at the annual convention of the American Numismatic Association, Samuel Brown showed a few of his friends a matched set of coins he had acquired – five 1913 Liberty Head nickels!”
It’s true that Brown’s buy ads appeared in the December 1919 issue (a single insertion offering $500 per coin) and the January-March 1920 issues (a quarterly ad buy offering $600 per coin). What likely isn’t true is the appearance of all five of the
coins at the 1920 convention. The con-ontemporary record of the coin being at thehe convention comes from the October 192020 The Numismatist, where “a” specimenen is listed as having been left on display.y. Brown may have had all five coins at that point, but that they were all at thatat convention remains a matter of hearsayy and conjecture.
“Samuel Brown’s own backgroundd is quite interesting. He was assistant Curator of the Mint’s collection of coins from 1904 to 1907, and Storekeeper at the time the 1913 Libertys were struck ...” Travis continued, saying Taxay wrote: “‘Since Brown displayed [italics in the original] all five pieces just a few months after offering to purchase them, theree is the further suggestion that he may haveave possessed the set all along, and [“merely been trying”] to establish a price.’”
The written record of this showing from the October 1920 issue of The Numismatist
reads in part: “Samuel W. Brown of North Tonawanda, N.Y., was present for a short time on Monday. He had with him a specimen of the latest great rarity in U.S. coinage – the nickel of 1913 of the Liberty Head type. It was among the exhibits the remainder of the Convention, with a label announcing that it was valued at $600, which amount Mr. Brown announced he is ready to pay for all proof specimens offered to him.”
Sometime before the end of 1920, Brown requested his nickel back, saying he had a deal pending for the coin. Again, just one coin.
The first documented offering of all five coins came years later, in 1924, when August Wagner of Philadelphia either on his own or as a front for the owner, began offering the coins in advertisements in The Numismatist.
As for Brown, his first documented association with the nickel was, as mentioned earlier, at the Dec. 3, 1919, evening meeting of the Chicago Coin Club at the Hotel Sherman in Chicago. At that point, he became a member of the coin club and displayed one of the coins, as evidenced by the report of the Chicago Coin Club meeting in the February 1920 issue of The Numismatist.
After joining the ANA in 1906 and attending the ANA convention that year in Philadelphia, Brown’s next known appearance at an ANA show was at the Philadelphia ANA convention in October 1919, shortly before his 1913 nickel buy ads began appearing in The Numismatist. Brown can be seen in the official convention photo, which was posed for on the steps of the Philadelphia Mint, the members having just taken a tour of the Mint.
The advertisement deadline for the December 1919 issue of The Numismatist was Nov. 20, 1919 and, being his first ad, Brown likely had his ad copy in earlier than that. He most certainly knew of the coin by then and probably had in his possession at least one specimen by that point in order to have traveled less than two weeks later to Chicago with the coin.
The Chicago Coin Club was formed in February 1919 and began campaigning for the rights to host an ANA convention shortly thereafter. The awarding of the show came at the October 1919 ANA convention in Philadelphia that Brown attended, which is likely why he decided to travel from his New York home to Chicago in the dead of winter to display his coin and join the club.
So, what is the importance of the evidence that Brown displayed the nickel nearly a year prior to the 1920 convention?
For one thing, it proves Brown had one of the coins by the time he first advertised trying to buy the coins. It had always been speculated that that was the case, but contemporary evidence had been lacking. He may have had just one or all five of the coins at that point. However, he apparently only showed a single example at the Dec. 3, 1919, meeting.
The evidence showing that he brought tthe rarity to the Dec. 3, 1919, meeting also bblows apart one of the weaker arguments made over the years as writers attempted to explain away the gap between 1913 and the supposed first showing of the coin in 1920. Some writers have claimed that the gap represented the seven-year statute of limitations on theft. However, 1913 to 1919 doesn’t make it. Plus, the government could have confiscated the coin either way. (See what happened to Henry R. Linderman’s 1804 silver dollar as an example, or the more recent confiscation of 1933 gold $20s.)
Others contend that the ads were to build a market for the coin before he brought it to the 1920 ANA convention in Chicago. However, this is unlikely the sole motivation, considering Brown’s ads stopped well before the convention — leaving April, May, June, July and possibly August on the table as issues in which he could have placed advertisements to juice the market.
Another theory is that the ads were to provide legitimacy to Brown’s owning the coin. He didn’t steal it. He got it from his advertisements. The 1919 Chicago Coin Club display disproves this. It would have been ludicrous for Brown to show the coin to prominent numismatists before his ad appeared in print if he was trying to use the ads as a smokescreen as to how he obtained the coin. There were more than two dozen members and guests at the Dec. 3, 1919, meeting, including prominent numismatists such as Alden S. Boyer and J. Henri Ripstra, who later served as ANA presidents. They knew the significance of great rarities, and there was no guarantee that word wouldn’t get out and blow Brown’s cover.
“In spite of the fact that the 1913 Liberty Head nickel is a ‘piece de caprice,’ Travis wrote, “it is one of the really storied coins of all history. If one of the five ‘originals’ were offered at auction today, there’s no telling how high the price would go.”
Today, specimens of the 1913 Liberty Head nickel sell in the millions when they appear at auction, with the list of past owners including a playboy king and some of the biggest names among collectors and dealers.