Rare 1913 Liberty Head nickel coin will be auction on April 25 at a numismatic auction at Heritage Auction house in Chicago where it’s expected to fetch several million dollars. The 1913 Liberty Head Nickel graded PR63 by PCGS previously owned by George Owen Walton. Only five of the 1913 nickel known to exist but the George Walton specimen has the most remarkable story. It was illegally cast, discovered in a car wreck that killed its owner, declared a fake, forgotten in a closet for decades and then found to be the real deal.
The set of five Liberty Head coins dated 1913 were secretly produced by a Philadelphia mint worker named Samuel W. Brown and he altering the die to add the bogus date. Brown sold the set in 1920 at the American Numismatic Association Convention in Chicago. The five remained together under various owners until the set was broken up in 1942.
George O. Walton purchased one of the coins in the mid-1940s for a reported $3,750. Walton died on 9 March 1962 when a vehicle driven by an alcohol-impaired driver crossed into the oncoming lane and crashed into his 1955 Ford station wagon in Nash County, North Carolina. He was headed for the first-ever coin show in Wilson, North Carolina, of the combined coin clubs of Wilson and Greensboro. All his $250,000 worth of coins were recovered.
His sister Melva Givens was given the 1913 Liberty nickel after experts declared the coin a fake because of suspicions the date had been altered. The flaw probably happened because of Brown's imprecise work casting the planchet, the copper and nickel blank disc used to create the coin.
Givens put the coin in an envelope and stuck it in a closet, where it stayed for the next 30 years until her death in 1992. Her four children brought the coin to the 2003 American Numismatic Association World's Fair of Money in Baltimore, where the four surviving 1913 Liberty nickels were being exhibited. A team of rare coin experts concluded it was the long-missing fifth coin.
All five 1913 Liberty nickels were struck with proof dies, polished to create the mirrored appearance commonly associated with brilliant proof coins. However, the planchets for all five pieces were normally produced rather than burnished as they would have been to create brilliant proof nickels. For that reason, the 1913 Liberty nickels have a distinctive appearance unlike any other circulation strike or proof in the series.
On January 2010, a 1913 Liberty Head nickel-Olsen specimen was sold for $3,737,500 in Heritage Auctions Platinum Night. The coin said to be once owned by King Farouk of Egypt.
Source: Heritage Auction.
