Some of the most valuable pieces in any collection aren’t rare because they’re old, they’re rare because they weren’t supposed to exist at all. The 1913 Liberty Head Nickel is the best example of that in American numismatics.
By 1913, the Mint had already switched designs to what we now call the Buffalo Nickel. The Liberty Head design was officially retired. And yet five nickels dated 1913 with the old Liberty Head design surfaced years later, widely believed to have been struck without authorization by a Mint employee. Only five are known to exist anywhere in the world. Two sit in museum collections today, including the Smithsonian. The other three are privately held, and one has sold at auction for more than four million dollars.
It’s a genuinely wild story for a five-cent coin, and a good reminder that rarity in this hobby often comes from an accident, or in this case, something that probably shouldn’t have happened at all. Do you chase rarities like this in your own collecting, or do you collect for the history instead? We’d love to know which side of that you’re on.