DECEMBER 3
1919•1913 Liberty Head Nickel First Documented
2009•American Eagle Platinum Proof: Preamble Series
The Mysterious 1913 Liberty Head Nickel Makes Its First Documented Appearance
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On December 3, 1919, former United States Mint employee Samuel W. Brown attended a meeting of the Chicago Coin Club and exhibited something that officially should not have existed: a Liberty Head five-cent coin dated 1913.
The meeting, held at Chicago's Hotel Sherman, now represents the earliest known public display of a 1913 Liberty Head nickel that can be supported by a contemporary written report. A summary published in the February 1920 issue of The Numismatist recorded Brown's presence and described among the exhibits a “proof nickel of the old type of 1913.”
That short entry would eventually become one of the most tantalizing clues in American numismatic history.
No regular 1913 Liberty Head nickels were supposed to have been issued. The Liberty Head design had been replaced by James Earle Fraser's Indian Head, or Buffalo, nickel in 1913. Yet five Liberty Head nickels bearing the impossible date are known today. How they were made, under whose authority, and exactly when they left the Philadelphia Mint remain unresolved.
December 3 does not answer those questions. It gives us something more defensible: the earliest currently documented moment when one of America's greatest coin rarities was shown to other collectors.
The Coin That Shouldn't Exist
The Liberty Head nickel had been America's standard five-cent design since 1883.
Charles E. Barber, Chief Engraver of the United States Mint, designed the coin.
Its obverse shows a classical head of Liberty surrounded by stars, while the reverse centers a large Roman numeral V inside a wreath.
For three decades the design was familiar American money.
Then came 1913.
The Mint replaced Barber's Liberty Head design with James Earle Fraser's new Indian Head nickel.
Today collectors generally call it the Buffalo nickel.
Fraser's design paired a composite Native American portrait on the obverse with an American bison on the reverse.
It was dramatically different from the formal nineteenth-century imagery of the Liberty Head coin.
Regular production of the new type began in 1913.
Mint records do not list a regular mintage of 1913 Liberty Head nickels.
That fact is the foundation of the mystery.
A collector following official production figures would have expected the Liberty Head series to end with 1912.
Yet five coins dated 1913 eventually surfaced.
They were not merely altered 1912 nickels. They were genuine pieces produced from dies carrying the 1913 date.
Samuel W. Brown
At the center of the story is Samuel W. Brown.
Brown was a numismatist, but more importantly, he had once worked at the Philadelphia Mint.
Specialist research places his Mint employment from 1903 to 1913.
That employment would later make his connection to the mysterious nickels impossible to ignore.
It does not, however, prove exactly how the coins were created.
In the December 1919 issue of The Numismatist, Brown placed an advertisement seeking a coin that virtually no collector knew existed.
He offered $500 for a 1913 Liberty Head nickel, preferably in proof condition.
The offer was remarkable.
Why would Brown advertise for a coin absent from Mint production records?
How did he know enough to ask for that exact date and type?
Those questions have followed the coin ever since.
Five hundred dollars was a substantial amount of money in 1919.
Brown was not placing a casual classified advertisement for an ordinary missing date.
He was offering a premium for a coin whose existence itself was questionable.
The advertisement would become even more suspicious in hindsight after Brown revealed that he possessed examples.
But an advertisement alone did not prove that a 1913 Liberty Head nickel actually existed.
Then came the Chicago Coin Club meeting.
On Wednesday, December 3, 1919, members gathered at the Hotel Sherman in Chicago.
The club itself was young, having been organized earlier that year.
Brown attended and was among ten people elected to membership that evening.
During the meeting, members displayed coins and numismatic items.
One entry in the later published report stood out.
The meeting report appeared in the February 1920 issue of The Numismatist.
Among the exhibits, it recorded a proof nickel of the old type dated 1913 and noted that such coins were not supposed to have been struck.
Modern researcher Robert R. Van Ryzin recognized the importance of this seemingly ordinary club report.
It established that a 1913 Liberty Head nickel had been publicly exhibited months before the famous 1920 American Numismatic Association convention appearance long associated with the coins' emergence.
Why Contemporary Documentation Matters
Numismatic stories often grow through repetition.
Decades after an event, memories become uncertain and anecdotes can be transformed into accepted “facts.”
A contemporary club report is different.
It was written close to the event, published in the hobby's leading journal, and identifies both the meeting and the unusual coin.
That makes December 3, 1919 a much stronger historical anchor than later recollections alone.
For many years, the 1920 American Numismatic Association convention was treated as the great public debut of the 1913 Liberty Head nickels.
Brown appeared there with the rarities and the wider hobby became aware that multiple examples existed.
There had been suggestions of earlier appearances, but firm contemporary documentation was elusive.
The rediscovered Chicago Coin Club report changed that chronology.
In August 1920, Brown attended the American Numismatic Association convention in Chicago.
By then he had five 1913 Liberty Head nickels.
The five coins became a sensation.
Brown had moved from advertising that he wanted to buy the mysterious pieces to possessing the complete known group.
The transition naturally intensified suspicion about his role in their origin.
Only five genuine 1913 Liberty Head nickels are known.
No sixth specimen has been authenticated.
The tiny population helped turn the issue into a legendary rarity.
Unlike coins that are rare because most examples were melted or lost, the 1913 Liberty nickel appears to have begun life as an extraordinarily small group.
Why exactly five were made remains part of the mystery.
The most dramatic theory is that the five coins were clandestinely struck at the Philadelphia Mint without authorization.
Because Brown had worked at the Mint through 1913, he became an obvious suspect.
Some numismatic historians have suggested that Brown either made the coins himself, participated in their production, or obtained them from someone who did.
But suspicion is not documentary proof.
Other explanations have been proposed.
The coins may have been struck as trial pieces while 1913 Liberty Head dies still existed.
They may have been produced for Mint cabinet purposes under practices that were looser than modern collectors might expect.
Another possibility is that someone else at the Mint created them and Brown acquired them later.
Specialists continue to debate which scenario best fits the evidence.
The date “1913” on the coin does not tell us the day it was made.
There is no surviving production record identifying a legitimate batch of five 1913 Liberty Head nickels.
Without such documentation, assigning an exact clandestine striking date would be speculation.
That is why December 3, 1919 is so useful historically.
It dates an event we can document: the coin's exhibition.
The Transition to the Buffalo Nickel
The circumstances of early 1913 make the mystery even more intriguing.
The Liberty Head nickel did not become obsolete at midnight on December 31, 1912.
The Buffalo nickel still had to complete its design and production transition.
Experimental Buffalo nickels were struck in January 1913, while regular production came later.
Thus, Liberty Head dies dated 1913 could theoretically have existed during the transitional period.
The mystery also sits at the intersection of two very different coin designers.
Charles Barber represented the institutional Mint engraving tradition of the late nineteenth century.
His Liberty Head nickel was restrained, classical, and conventional.
James Earle Fraser represented the artistic reform movement that transformed U.S. coinage in the early twentieth century.
His Buffalo nickel was sculptural, distinctly American, and visually bold.
That makes the 1913 Liberty Head nickel almost ghostlike.
It carries the date of the new era but the design of the old one.
Officially, 1913 belongs to Fraser's Buffalo nickel.
Yet five coins preserve Barber's Liberty Head design with that same date.
The combination gives the rarity a visual contradiction that even noncollectors can understand immediately.
Brown's employment at the Philadelphia Mint is one of the strongest circumstantial facts in the story.
He had access to the institution during the relevant period.
He later advertised specifically for the unknown coin.
Then he displayed one in December 1919 and eventually revealed five.
The sequence invites suspicion.
But responsible history must separate an intriguing pattern from a proven chain of events.
Some numismatic writers have explored whether other Mint personnel, including engraver George T. Morgan, could have been involved.
Morgan had a long Mint career and access to dies and production facilities.
Special pieces and restrikes had occasionally emerged from the Mint under circumstances that would be unacceptable under modern controls.
Still, no surviving document conclusively assigns the 1913 nickels to Morgan or any other specific employee.
American numismatic history contains several famous coins made outside ordinary production channels.
The Class II and Class III 1804 dollars are classic examples of later Mint-made rarities connected with collector demand and unofficial circumstances.
Patterns, restrikes, fantasy pieces, and special presentation coins complicate any assumption that every genuine Mint product appears neatly in annual mintage records.
The 1913 Liberty nickel belongs to this shadowy tradition.
The Five Coins Stay Together
Brown eventually sold the five nickels as a group.
They passed through dealer channels and ultimately entered the extraordinary collection of Colonel Edward Howland Robinson Green, commonly known as Colonel E.H.R. Green.
Green, the son of financier Hetty Green, assembled one of the great American collections of his era.
For years the five famous nickels remained together in his holdings.
After Colonel Green's death in 1936, his enormous numismatic holdings were dispersed.
Dealer B.G. Johnson and young collector Eric P. Newman became involved with the five 1913 nickels.
The group was eventually broken apart.
From that point, each specimen developed its own pedigree through some of the most celebrated collections in American numismatics.
The surviving pieces are commonly identified by the names of important former owners.
They include the Eliasberg, Olsen, Walton, Norweb, and McDermott specimens.
Three are now held by museums and two remain in private hands.
Their individual histories have become nearly as famous as the mystery of their creation.
The Eliasberg specimen is generally regarded as the finest known.
It was owned by Louis E. Eliasberg Sr., famous for assembling the only complete collection of United States coins by date and mintmark under the traditional definition of completeness.
The coin has repeatedly made headlines through major sales and private transactions.
Its exceptional condition adds another layer to the already extraordinary rarity.
The Olsen specimen became famous beyond the coin-collecting world.
It appeared in an episode of the television series Hawaii Five-O, where the plot revolved around the valuable nickel.
The appearance helped turn the 1913 Liberty Head nickel into a piece of popular culture.
Few American coins have achieved comparable recognition outside numismatics.
One of the most remarkable episodes involved collector George O. Walton.
Walton owned a 1913 Liberty Head nickel and died in an automobile accident in 1962.
The coin recovered from his effects was later dismissed as not genuine.
For decades, only four authentic specimens were widely recognized, while Walton's coin remained with his family.
The Lost Fifth Nickel Returns
In 2003, the five known specimens were scheduled to be reunited for an American Numismatic Association convention exhibit.
A search for the missing Walton coin brought his family's piece back for examination.
Experts determined that the supposedly fake nickel was genuine.
After roughly four decades in obscurity, the fifth 1913 Liberty Head nickel had been rediscovered.
The story added yet another chapter to the coin's mythology.
The 1913 Liberty Head nickel also made auction history.
In 1972, one specimen became the first coin reported to sell for more than $100,000.
That threshold was astonishing at the time.
It demonstrated how dramatically elite numismatic rarities had appreciated and helped push the hobby into wider financial headlines.
In 1996, a 1913 Liberty Head nickel again crossed a historic threshold when the Eliasberg specimen sold at auction for more than $1 million.
It became the first coin to achieve a seven-figure auction price.
The mysterious five-cent piece had gone from an unexplained club exhibit in 1919 to one of the most valuable objects in American numismatics.
Rarity alone does not explain the coin's status.
Some American coins are rarer.
The 1913 Liberty Head nickel combines several ingredients that create legend: an impossible date, only five known examples, a former Mint employee, no ordinary production record, unanswered questions, dramatic pedigrees, a lost-and-rediscovered specimen, and repeated record prices.
Its story can be understood even by someone who has never collected coins.
Collectors value certainty when authenticating coins, but mystery can make history irresistible.
If a document surfaced tomorrow explaining exactly who made the five nickels, when they were struck, why they were produced, and how Brown acquired them, numismatics would gain an extraordinary historical answer.
It would also lose one of its greatest mysteries.
For more than a century, uncertainty has been part of the coin's identity.
There are several facts that do not require speculation.
No regular 1913 Liberty Head nickel mintage appears in Mint records.
Five genuine examples are known.
Samuel W. Brown had worked at the Philadelphia Mint.
He advertised in 1919 seeking a 1913 Liberty Head nickel.
And on December 3, 1919, a contemporary record documents one being exhibited at the Chicago Coin Club meeting he attended.
What We Cannot Say with Confidence
We cannot responsibly assign an exact date on which the five coins were struck.
We cannot prove from surviving documentation that Brown personally struck them.
We cannot prove that they were officially authorized.
We cannot prove exactly how Brown acquired all five.
Those distinctions matter because repeating a plausible theory as fact would erase the very uncertainty that makes the historical record interesting.
The 1919 meeting report demonstrates why old numismatic periodicals matter.
A few lines in a club summary can alter the accepted chronology of one of America's most famous coins.
Researchers working through digitized archives recognized that the report pushed the coin's documented exhibition history backward from the 1920 ANA convention.
It is a reminder that major discoveries can be hidden in sources that have been publicly available for decades.
The digitization of numismatic literature has transformed this kind of research.
Old issues of The Numismatist, club publications, auction catalogs, dealer records, and specialist journals can now be searched in ways earlier researchers could scarcely imagine.
The Newman Numismatic Portal has played a major role in making this material accessible.
The December 3 story is a perfect example of how digital archives can refine the history of a physical coin.
Nominally, each 1913 Liberty Head nickel is worth five cents.
Its metal content is ordinary for the denomination.
Its extraordinary value comes entirely from numismatic history.
That contrast is one of the pleasures of coin collecting.
A tiny object designed to represent five cents can become worth millions because of rarity, provenance, mystery, condition, and cultural significance.
December 3, 1919 does not tell us when the five 1913 Liberty Head nickels were made.
It tells us when one of them steps securely into the documentary record.
At the Hotel Sherman in Chicago, Samuel W. Brown showed fellow collectors a proof example of the old Liberty Head type dated 1913—a coin that official production records said should not exist.
A contemporary report preserved the moment.
Months later Brown would display all five known examples at the 1920 ANA convention, and the coins would begin a century-long journey through famous collections, museum exhibits, record-setting sales, television appearances, disappearance, rediscovery, and endless debate.
The mystery of their creation remains unresolved.
But their documented public history now has a clear early landmark: December 3, 1919.
That night, one of America's greatest numismatic mysteries walked into a Chicago coin-club meeting.
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