Found an interesting pair of articles related to the 1913 Liberty Nickels
dbldie55
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From the October 1937 The News Journal (Wilmington, DE) newspaper.
Headline of first article:
Boy is offered $650 for Liberty Head Nickel.
A 13 year old boy from Texas found a 1913 Liberty head nickel. He showed it to his bankers, who called a numismatist from Fort Worth Texas (wonder who that could be), who promptly offered $650 for the coin.
The expert said only five 1913 "liberty heads" were minted, that three of them were in the Metropolitan Museum, one was lost at sea, and this was the last of them.
This story was printed nationwide. As a note, I think he turned down up to $1,000 and then found out it was a fake.
Now for the irony of this story in this newspaper on this date.
The story right below this has the headline:
Fight over Green Estate Taxes is Shifted to N.Y.
This is a article about estate taxes on the Col. Edward H. R. Green estate.
As we all know now, this estate had all 5 known examples at this time.
Comments
And EPN bought them ... after agonizing if he should spend the money for "the other three".
That letter is in the NNP.
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The Fort Worth 'expert' had to be Mehl.
I'm sure he would have pronounced that example as a 'fake', it it were.
Just like newspapers today, there's something missing from the story......
@dbldie55... What kind of research were you doing when you found this article? Upcoming book? Cheers, RickO
The "13 year old boy from Texas found a 1913 Liberty head nickel" sounds like a planted story for publicity. Possibly by a dealer from Texas? Or it could just be incompetent reporting.
Glad things like that never happen in media today.
"To Be Esteemed Be Useful" - 1792 Birch Cent --- "I personally think we developed language because of our deep need to complain." - Lily Tomlin
Could be. Was in the news nation wide for a week. Name and town was given, would not have been hard to verify.
I heard once that Mehl got a lot of altered date coins sent to him by people trying to cash in on his published buy.
Mehl's first ads failed to mention "no buffaloes." So guessing he got swamped with them.
1913 Liberty Head not the first time he had offered $50 or $100 for a coin he knew wouldn't likely be found. He had done same for such coins as the 1894-S dime long before the 1913 nickel was known. They served as kind of a template for his later famous $50 offer for the 1913.
In case of interest, I have new article on the 1913 Liberty Head nickel, its first showing at a 1919 Chicago Coin Club meeting, and the coin's rise to fame. First part was in the Sept. 29 Numismatic News. Second part is slated for Oct. 13 issue.
And so the story goes