Collectors Corner^SM: The Collectibles Marketplace

The 1885 Liberty Nickel is one of the toughest business strikes in its series. Click image to enlarge.

The Liberty Nickel series is a favorite among many American collectors even more than 140 years after the so-called “V” nickel debuted in 1883. One reason this series of antiquity is so widely collected today is because it remains relatively affordable for collectors to complete.

Of course, those who know this series well may immediately conjure up images of the 1913 Liberty Nickel, a multimillion-dollar trophy coin that is hardly “affordable” for most people to purchase. However, collectors generally don’t need this piece to “complete” their Liberty Nickel collections, since it was produced as a proof – surreptitiously struck, no less. That fact most certainly doesn’t take away from the coin’s well-deserved numismatic significance. But what it does mean is that many collectors can be perfectly satisfied pursuing this series by narrowing down their objectives to collecting only one example of each circulation issue.

And among the circulation strikes there are several Liberty Nickel key dates. The lowest-mintage issue among these is the 1912-S, which saw only 238,000 emissions during the last year of regular production for the series. Then there is the 1885, a Philadelphia issue struck to the tune of 1,473,300 pieces. A mintage of over 1 million may not suggest a rarity off the bat, but a deeper dive into this Gilded Age treasure reveals something more. For starters, the mintage of the 1885 Liberty Nickel ranks as second-lowest in the series behind the 1912-S, and overall survival numbers point to nothing less than a bona fide rarity. PCGS estimates only 5,000 survivors across all grades, with about 750 in Mint State grades and just 150 in MS65 or higher.

The 1913 Liberty Nickel is a $375 coin even in G4, with prices doubling to $750 in F12. The coin doubles in price once again as we approach XF40, where the piece retails for some $1,500. The coin garners nearly $5,000 in MS63 and goes for north of $8,000 in MS65. The record price for the 1885 Liberty Nickel was hammered in 2006, when a PCGS-graded specimen notched an incredible $74,750 in the grade of MS67 – only eight specimens have been graded at that threshold, and it remains the highest grade PCGS has ever awarded an 1885 Liberty Nickel.