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Josh Tatum: Urban Legend.
Dentuck
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OK – that was too brief. Some 1883 nickels w/o the word “cents” were initially reeded and gold plated as novelties by Philadelphia jewelers and others. Some were spent and accepted as $5 by shop keepers. (You have to wonder if they should have been handling money – not to be able to quickly tell the weight difference of a $5 gold coin and a 5-cent coin….) The US Mint learned if the defacement within days of the new coins being released, and quickly issued a replacement with “cents” added.
<< <i>Who is Josh Tatum? >>
Ah-ha!
The only thing that can be proved is that the Mint did change the design. Until Mr. Burdette goes though the box of correspondence that has the letter that says something along the lines of
"Hey Charlie! Chet Arthur was playng poker with the Cabinet the other day, and the Secretary of the Interior tried to slip one of your new nickels into the game as a fiver!!!! You got fifteen minutes to put the word CENTS on there or your outta here!!!!!!"
Stinky
I have seen bogus "Racketeer Nickels" where the reeding looks like it was cut in with a knife. Another giveaway on that piece was that it was only in G-VG condition, yet the plating was intact where all that metal had been worn away......
TD
<< <i>PROBABLY an urban legend. Don't think it has been proven one way or the other, but since you cannot prove a negative I don't think it can ever be proven that NOTHING happened.
The only thing that can be proved is that the Mint did change the design. Until Mr. Burdette goes though the box of correspondence that has the letter that says something along the lines of
"Hey Charlie! Chet Arthur was playng poker with the Cabinet the other day, and the Secretary of the Interior tried to slip one of your new nickels into the game as a fiver!!!! You got fifteen minutes to put the word CENTS on there or your outta here!!!!!!"
Stinky >>
If he was acquitted, as the article states, wouldn't there be a court record with evidence, witness testimony, etc.
Was one of the passers a deaf-mute named Josh Tatum?
"John Tatum was born in 1964." He lived most of his life in the past, just like Mary Cunningham, model for the Longacre cent and Saint-Gaudens $20.
Pete
Louis Armstrong
Here's a link to some info from The E-Sylum:
JOSH TATUM RACKETEER NICKEL REFERENCES PRIOR TO 1968
Wonder how the "Tatum" surname crept into the story, though. Gives it a bit of semi-credibility, like any good urban legend should have.
Edit to add- I just saw the NYT article that Frankcoins posted. Very neat. Thanks for posting that. So there IS some truth to the story, after all, even if ol' Josh was an embellishment. I'm glad to hear that the "racketeer" part is true, at least.
<< <i>I think the whole "Josh Tatum" story is a bunch of hogwash, including the myth that "to josh" (meaning to kid or to pull the wool over one's eyes) was derived from the 1883 Liberty Head nickel scenario.
Here's a link to some info from The E-Sylum:
JOSH TATUM RACKETEER NICKEL REFERENCES PRIOR TO 1968 >>
$15,000 profit represents 3,000 coins successfully passed, not counting those pieces that were taken by the merchant as a nickel and kept.
One would think that carefully reeded and gilt "originals" would be more common, unless of course they were deposited at banks as $5's and diverted to the Treasury, or seized by Secret Service agents directly from merchants who complained about getting stuck.
In all my years at Collectors Clearinghouse and ANACS and in coin shops I have never seen a racketeer nickel I was convinced was an "original," and only two or three that I thought had a chance of being one.
TD
"Seu cabra da peste,
"Sou Mangueira......."
<< <i>I think the urban legend about Richard Gere is more interesting than this one. >>
Was that the isue best left to hospital staff and the SPCA?
Very very sick. I like your style.
<< <i>
$15,000 profit represents 3,000 coins successfully passed, not counting those pieces that were taken by the merchant as a nickel and kept.
One would think that carefully reeded and gilt "originals" would be more common, unless of course they were deposited at banks as $5's and diverted to the Treasury, or seized by Secret Service agents directly from merchants who complained about getting stuck.
In all my years at Collectors Clearinghouse and ANACS and in coin shops I have never seen a racketeer nickel I was convinced was an "original," and only two or three that I thought had a chance of being one.
TD >>
Interesting! Thank you for sharing that.
The "$15,000 profit" made me wonder, too. Three thousand coins means three thousand transactions (at least that many, as you point out, since some coins would have been accepted as 5 cents and not $5, yielding no profit). All that over the course of a few weeks/months.
The urban legend commonly says that "Tatum" bilked his marks by purchasing a five-cent cigar. Think about the number of cigar shops or purveyors in the average town or city back in the 1880s. Did Tatum hit the same shops over and over and over, dozens or hundreds of times each, with nobody catching on until after he'd amassed $15,000 in profit? (The equivalent of $340,880.95 in 2009 US$, according to the Inflation Calculator.)
And what did he do with 3,000 cigars? That's a lotta tobacco.
Recipient of the coveted "You Suck" award, April 2009 for cherrypicking a 1833 CBHD LM-5, and April 2022 for a 1835 LM-12, and again in Aug 2012 for picking off a 1952 FS-902.
<< <i>
<< <i>
$15,000 profit represents 3,000 coins successfully passed, not counting those pieces that were taken by the merchant as a nickel and kept.
One would think that carefully reeded and gilt "originals" would be more common, unless of course they were deposited at banks as $5's and diverted to the Treasury, or seized by Secret Service agents directly from merchants who complained about getting stuck.
In all my years at Collectors Clearinghouse and ANACS and in coin shops I have never seen a racketeer nickel I was convinced was an "original," and only two or three that I thought had a chance of being one.
TD >>
Interesting! Thank you for sharing that.
The "$15,000 profit" made me wonder, too. Three thousand coins means three thousand transactions (at least that many, as you point out, since some coins would have been accepted as 5 cents and not $5, yielding no profit). All that over the course of a few weeks/months.
The urban legend commonly says that "Tatum" bilked his marks by purchasing a five-cent cigar. Think about the number of cigar shops or purveyors in the average town or city back in the 1880s. Did Tatum hit the same shops over and over and over, dozens or hundreds of times each, with nobody catching on until after he'd amassed $15,000 in profit? (The equivalent of $340,880.95 in 2009 US$, according to the Inflation Calculator.)
And what did he do with 3,000 cigars? That's a lotta tobacco. >>
One would think that word of mouth warnings would have preceded official government and/or newspaper warnings. He would have had to travel from town to town to try to stay ahead of the word.
TD