1 The Stupidest Coin the Government Ever Made: The Racketeer Nickel
In 1883, the United States issued a newly designed five-cent piece called the “V nickel.” The coin got its name because the value was indicated on the back simply with the Roman numeral “V,” sans the word “cents.” After all, it was obvious it was a nickel, right? Apparently not. Turns out, the V nickel was the same size as a U.S. $5 gold piece, and both coins featured a bust of Lady Liberty on the front.
It wasn’t long before lightbulbs started going off in the heads of con men all across America. Within weeks of the V’s debut, crooks were gold-plating the nickels and palming them off as $5 gold pieces. Despite the gold-plated nickels not looking like $5 coins and not being nearly as heavy, most people didn’t notice, because the gold coins were rarely used in everyday purchases.
By April 1883, “gilded nickels” were both a national joke and a growing concern for commerce and law enforcement. Finally, embarrassed officials put an end to the scam by halting production of the nickels until new dies were prepared. This time, the redesigned backs read “V cents.” Today, the V nickel remains a favorite among coin collectors.
If the average person received a penny for their thoughts, they’d rake in a cool $600 per day.
2 The Coin Your Mom Doesn’t Want You to Pick Up: Leper Colony Coins
Leprosy, or Hansen’s disease, was once among the most feared diseases in the world. Mistakenly believed to be highly contagious, it was a disfiguring and paralyzing condition that, until the 1900s, had no known cure. Sufferers were forced from their homes and exiled into colonies, where they wouldn’t be able to spread the disease to the larger population.
Among attempts to quarantine lepers: Giving them their own currency. Many people feared leprosy could be transmitted by handling money, so special coins were minted (and, in some cases, paper bills printed) for leper colonies in areas including Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, the U.S. Canal Zone, and the Philippines. Some city officials found another convenient use for leper money—paying inmates for their work and allowing them to buy personal items with it. This, so the logic went, prevented prisoners from ever being able to save up “real” money to aid in an escape.
3 The Coin You Can Never Take on an Airplane: Spanish Pieces of Eight
In the New World, colonists had to get creative when it came to currency. Because the British were too cheap to mint coins for their American settlements, colonists had to make do with barter, paper money, or whatever foreign coins they could scrape up through trade. Fortunately, Spain’s New World colonies were rich in silver mines, and the Spanish had plenty of coins to toss around.
At the time, Spain minted coins about the same size as the Germanic silver thaler coins of Europe, and Americans took to calling them “Spanish dollars.” But officially, Spanish dollars were valued at eight reals (real being Spanish for “royal”). So how do you make change for a Spanish dollar? For our colonial forefathers, it was easy. Knowing that silver is a fairly soft metal, they’d just take a mallet and a chisel, or even an ax, and slice up the coin like a pizza. The cut slices were called “bits,” or pieces of eight. A 2-real piece was worth about 25 U.S. cents, which is why a quarter is sometimes referred to as “two bits.” Another term for cut coin slices was “sharp silver,” because the points were indeed sharp enough to cut cloth or even skin.
The circulation of pieces of eight and Spanish dollars in America began to decline after the first U.S. Mint opened in Philadelphia in 1792. However, it took a long time for the establishment to catch up with America’s demand for coins, and foreign currency was legal tender in the United States until 1857.
Although pennies are worth less than their component metals, federal law prohibits melting them down.
4 The Not-Quite Counterfeit Coin: The 1804 Silver Dollar
America’s most famous rare coin is the 1804 silver dollar. Why so special? Because it was actually made by mistake. Due to governmental budget constraints, the production of silver dollars was halted in the early 19th century. And while a few thousand $1 coins were minted in 1804, they were produced frugally, using the previous year’s dies. Ironically, the first $1 coins dated 1804 weren’t made until 1834, when the United States decided to present the King of Siam and the Sultan of Muscat with a diplomatic gift: complete sets of American coins. Records at the U.S. Mint correctly listed 1804 as the last year silver dollars were made, but didn’t specify that the last ones were dated 1803. Consequently, American officials decided to strike a few new dollars with the date 1804, and ended up creating a coin that had never before existed.
Today, there are only 15 of these 1804 silver dollars left. Eight of them were from the batch minted as diplomatic gifts. The other seven were produced between 1858 and 1860, when an employee of the Philadelphia Mint decided to get rich quick on the coin collector’s market. Using the mint’s silver and equipment, he struck a number of new 1804 silver dollars to sell to collectors. The phony coins (although illegally produced, they’re technically not counterfeits because they were made at a U.S. Mint) were eventually found and melted down—all but seven of them, that is. One of these restrikes was auctioned in 2003 for $1.21 million, but that’s chump change compared to the $4.14 million paid for one of the original coins back in 1999.
5 The “Choose Your Own Coin” Coin: Blank Coins
The quality-control regulators at our mints do a great job of catching mistakes, but luckily for collectors, some botched coins do make their way into circulation. Among the more common errors are blank coins, such as a one-cent piece. Coins are made by pressing a die onto a planchet, or coin blank, that’s been punched out of a piece of sheet metal. Sometimes, a planchet slips through the process without being struck, and a blank coin ends up in an otherwise ordinary roll of pennies. Other common errors include coins struck off-center, coins struck on the wrong planchet (i.e., the image of a quarter stamped onto a penny), and double-struck coins.
At one point, the U.S. Mint was spending $35,000 a year to store 122 million unneeded Susan B. Anthony dollar coins.