The second five cent piece with the term "nickel" attached to it was the Liberty Head Nickel, or the "V Nickel" as many would call it. First appearing on January 30, 1883, the coin was designed by Charles E. Barber. Barber would also design several other United States coins of other denominations, with similar features.

The coin's obverse depicts Lady Liberty facing left, surrounded by thirteen stars. Liberty is wearing a small crown, imprinted with her namesake. The year appears at the bottom, just below her neck. The reverse of the coin displays a large "V", Roman numeric for the number 5. The "V" is tightly surrounded by a wreath, and has "E PLURIBUS UNUM" directly above it. "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" arcs along the top.

The original reverse design would prove to be a tremendous catastrophe, as the designer neglected to include the word "CENTS" on the coin. You might think this is just a simple oversight, but there was a fairly big caveat to consider.

The new nickel just happened to look a lot like the United States $5 gold piece of the period. The two coins were the same size and sported very similar features. Since these coins were still very new to the public, many people were still a bit unfamiliar with their look.

The most distinguishable characteristic between the two denominations was the color; the five cent piece was silver in color, and the five dollar piece was gold. What's an evil simplistic counterfeiter to do?

Gold-plate the new nickels, and pass them off as $5 pieces.

Since the new nickel lacked any statement of denomination beyond the "V" on the reverse, the coin could be interpreted as either five cents, or five dollars. Gold-plating the coins tilted the recognition in favor of the latter. This simple act inflated the percieved value of the coin to 100 times its original value, and merchants happily accepted these faked pieces, not realizing the coins were really just five cent pieces. These gold-plated nickels became known as "racketeer nickels".

After close to five and a half million of the "No CENTS" Liberty nickels were minted, Barber changed the design to include the word "CENTS" at the bottom of the reverse.

The final design lasted until 1913.

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United States Coinage

As the final days of the Liberty Nickel came to an end, Samuel Brown a mint employee, under the darkness of night, struck five 1913 nickels (production of liberty head nickels had ended on Dec. 12, 1912. In 1919 after leaving the U. S. Mint he placed an advertisement in the May 1919 Numismatist, a widely read journal for collectors offer $500 for any 1913 Liberty head nickels. None arrived, but now he had a cover, for his story of were his came from. In Aug of 1920 he displayed five at the ANA Convention, and then sold all five.

During the Great depression Max Mehl, ran adds offer $50 a piece for them, while his intent was only to sell his book, Star Rare Coin Encyclopedia, it had the effect of make this one of the most faked us coins of all time, and the most well known.

On his way to a coin show, George Watson was shoot and killed and the 1913 Liberty head nickel he was carrying was taken and never recovered. In 1995, the coin owned by Elisberg sold at auction for $1,485,000 the highest price of any US coin at the time.
Collectors with deep pockets can only hope to acquire three of these coins since one is now in the Smithsonian

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His name was Josh Tatum, and he changed the design of the nickel in 1883 even though he didn't work for the mint.

When the new 1883 nickels came out the first thing people noticed was that they lacked the word 'cents'. Josh Tatum was, shall we say resourceful. He gave the new coins a reeded edges and plated them gold. He then would make a purchase of less then five cents and receive change back out of five dollars. It didn't take long for the mint to see the errors of there ways and add the word 'cents' to the coin.

1883 Without Cents – 5,474,000
1883 With Cents – 16,026,000


As for Josh Tatum, he was never convicted... it seems he never said that its was a five dollar gold coin...
Because he was not able to speak, and that is where the phrase "Are you Joshing me?" comes from.