1913 Liberty Head Nickel

The 1913 Liberty Head nickel is among the most legendary rarities in United States coinage, with only five specimens known to exist. Its mystique stems not just from its extreme scarcity but from the unusual circumstances of its creation: the Mint had officially discontinued the Liberty Head nickel design in favor of the new Buffalo nickel before 1913 production began, meaning these coins were never authorized for regular issue.

Because of its rarity, dramatic backstory, and decades of colorful ownership history, the coin has become a fixture of numismatic folklore, and each of the five known examples is individually tracked and has its own well-documented provenance.

The Liberty Head ("V") nickel design, in production since 1883, was officially replaced by the Buffalo nickel beginning in 1913. Despite this, five nickels dated 1913 bearing the old Liberty Head design surfaced years later, apparently struck clandestinely, likely by a Mint employee, since no authorization exists for their production and they do not appear in official records.

The coins first came to public attention in the 1920s when collector and former Mint employee Samuel Brown, who had worked at the Philadelphia Mint in 1913, advertised offering to buy examples and then, notably, revealed he already possessed all five, fueling long-standing suspicion that he had made them himself or otherwise obtained them improperly. The coins subsequently changed hands among prominent collectors and dealers throughout the 20th century.

One of the five, sometimes called the "Walton specimen" after collector George Walton, was believed lost or fake for decades after Walton's death in a car accident before being authenticated and reunited with the other four in the early 2000s, adding another celebrated chapter to the coin's history.

The obverse shows Liberty's head facing left wearing a coronet inscribed LIBERTY, with stars around the border and the date below, matching the general design used on Liberty Head nickels from 1883 through 1912. The reverse features a large Roman numeral V within a wreath, encircled by UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and CENTS.

Because only five genuine examples exist and each is individually documented and tracked by collectors, institutions, and grading services, there is essentially no possibility of an undiscovered genuine specimen turning up in ordinary circulation or an estate; any coin claimed to be an undocumented sixth example would face extraordinary skepticism and require exhaustive authentication.

As one of the rarest and most famous coins in American numismatics, examples of the 1913 Liberty Head nickel have sold at auction for well over $1 million, with the finest known specimen having achieved a price exceeding $4 million in a private and later public sale, among the highest prices ever paid for a U.S. coin. Because all five specimens are known and tracked, prices are driven by condition differences among that small population and by the strength of each coin's provenance and public sale history.