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History of the Famous 1913 Liberty Nickel

The Liberty Nickel, commonly known as the "V" nickel for the Roman Numeral "V" on the reverse was officially produced from 1883 to 1912. We use the word officially because one of the most famous coins of all is the 1913 Liberty Nickel which was produced under suspect circumstances.

Sometime well after normal production stopped for the Liberty Nickel series, a few 1913 Liberty Nickels surfaced. In December 1919, Samuel W. Brown put an advertisement in The Numismatist offering to pay $500 for 1913 Liberty Nickels. It is a known fact that he was the first person to advertise for this date. It turns out; Brown was employed by the mint at the time of the suspected minting of the 1913 coins. He worked in the coining department. Although no one now knows for sure how the 1913 coins were produced, there are a couple theories:

It is speculated that the coins were produced in late 1912 when dies for the next years coinage were being made, and before it was decided that 1913 would be the introduction of the Buffalo Nickel.

The coins could have been produced early January 1913. The first "experimental" Buffalo Nickels were struck on January 7th, 1913 but production did not take place until February 15, due to various design problems. It would not have been unusual for someone in the Medal Department of the Mint to strike a few examples for cabinet/display purposes. Since the Buffalo Nickel was not yet officially approved, striking a few Liberty Nickels would not have been illegal.

While no one knows for sure how Brown came into possession of the nickels, it is possible that he received them from engraver George T. Morgan, who produced rarities upon occasion for sale to dealers. Considering the effort required to produce them, such as making the dies, preparing the machinery and then finally striking the coins, it is amazing that no-one came forward to claim participation or to profit from the coins.

After running the ad, Brown displayed the nickels in 1920 at an ANA convention. Now the word was out, 1913 Liberty Nickels actually existed. A few years later, a prominent coin dealer of the time, B. Max Mehl or Fort Worth, TX, advertised to pay $50 a piece for a 1913 Liberty Head Nickel. He knew he would never get one though. He was a marketing genius and as a result of his advertisements, Coin Collecting became all the rage and his publication, Star Rare Coin Encyclopedia sold very well. People began checking there change in hopes of finding the coin. To this day though, only 5 have ever surfaced and it is believed that the five known, are the only ones in existence.

In January 1924, August Wagner, a Philadelphia coin dealer advertised for sale the five nickels presumably on behalf of Samuel Brown. From there, they have had a host of owners. Until recently, one of the 5 pieces (the Walton Coin) had been missing for 40 years. Mr. Walton-a dealer, would take his coin to shows along with a duplicate. On his way to a show he was killed in a car wreck and his coins were scattered on the roadside. His heirs did get his coins back, but were never sure if the 1913 Liberty Nickel coin they had was the fake or the original. A major dealership once called the real coin a fake. In 2003 at the ANA Show, the coin was authenticated by several experts and the mystery of the missing coin ended. It was also at this convention that all 5 1913 Liberty Nickels were displayed together for the first time since 1920.

How famous is the 1913 Liberty Nickel? It was the first coin to sell for over one-million dollars. It was also featured on the old show Hawaii Five-0.

Keith Scott

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Other things that add up to 21 Grams?

I know it's more mass than weight, but let me be wrong for a sec.
In the movie "21 Grams", they mention a study that said we lose 21 grams of weight/mass the instant we die. Whether or not that is true, I think it's really interesting. Unfortunately, three things that they go on to list as each adding up to 21 grams -- five nickels, or a chocolate bar, or a hummingbird -- apparently may not equal this mass/weight at all.
(( http://www.brianstorms.com/archives/000215.html ))

While it's unlikely anyone knows off the top of their heads, does anyone else know of anything else that adds up to 21 grams?

Back in the '80s when I was in grade school, there was a big push to get Americans to adopt the metric system. Unfortunately, it failed, but I do remember people saying that a gram "weighed" about as much as a raisin, or a paper clip. (Of course, as you mentioned, a gram is a measure of mass, not weight. However, weight is a force -- that is, the downward force F on a mass m undergoing gravitational acceleration g, related by Newton's Law F = mg. So, as long as we confine our measurements to Earth's gravity, which is roughly constant over the surface of the entire planet, we can treat mass and weight as linearly proportional -- so that they mean pretty much the same thing.)

At any rate, assuming what people told us in the '80s is true, then we might say that 21g is approximately equal to the mass of 21 raisins, or 21 paper clips.

But, since the implication is that 21g is supposedly the mass of the human soul, it would be more interesting to find something that exists in the body of a living human that "weighs" 21g.

There are lists which break down the human body by percentages into its component chemical elements. (According to one such [see link], oxygen tops the list at 65%, followed by carbon (18%), hydrogen (10%), nitrogen (3%), etc.)

Still, one wonders whether these are based on the analysis of corpses, or live humans. If it were corpses, then the lists wouldn't help us (since the "soul elements" would have already escaped the body at time of death, before they could be measured). But, for the sake of argument, let's assume the scientists somehow analyzed live humans to come up with these figures.

Now, if we take the average mass of a human as 70kg, we find that 21g makes up 21/70,000 = 0.03% of the mass of a human body.

According to the list, this is close to the percentage of magnesium (0.05%) contained in the human body. So, it might be rational to suppose that the human soul is made of magnesium. Considering that magnesium deficiency causes symptoms such as muscle weakness and personality changes, one might reasonably associate loss of magnesium with a "loss of soul."

On the other hand, I haven't heard any reports that a substantial amount of magnesium disappears from the body at time of death. I imagine if this were the case, we would have heard about it by now.

So it seems more likely that the soul "substance" (which some people have termed "ectoplasm") is made up of a lot of different chemical elements -- perhaps in the same or similar proportions to those which the living human body comprises. That is, the soul could be merely an attenuated version of the corpus. If this were the case, the loss of such small proportions of elements at the time of death would be very difficult to measure.

Or, perhaps there is no soul (at least, not one whose mass can be measured), and the "21 grams" theory is a superstition or urban legend, which is being promulgated by Hollywood publicists in order to promote the movie.

In any case, though, it's an interesting question!