Liberty Head Nickels were officially minted from 1883 to 1912. However, an unknown mint official illegally produced an unknown quantity of V Nickels with the date 1913. There are currently only five known genuine examples of this 1913 coin making them some of the most valuable coins in existence. At one point, all five known 1913 coins were owned by Edward Howland Robinson Green, son of the famous Hetty Green.
The "Olsen specimen", named for a previous owner, was auctioned in 2003 for $3 million. Legend Numismatics, a coin dealership in Lincroft, New Jersey, bought another from collector Ed Lee of Merrimack, New Hampshire on June 2, 2005 for $4.15 million, the second-highest price ever paid for a rare U.S. coin. These coins were made famous by B. Max Mehl, a coin dealer from Texas, who in the 1930s placed advertisements in newspapers throughout the United States offering $50 for one of these nickels. No one took him up on the offer, which was in reality an advertising ploy for his business and its "Star Rare Coins Catalogue", but numismatists credit his search as contributing to increased interest in coin collecting.
The United States five cent coin, commonly called a nickel, is a unit of currency equaling one-twentieth, or five hundredths, of a United States dollar. The nickel's design since 1938 has featured a profile of President Thomas Jefferson on the obverse. From 1938 to 2003, Monticello was featured on the reverse. For 2004 and 2005,nickels featured new designs to commemorate the bicentennials of the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark expedition; these new designs were called the Westward Journey nickel series. In 2006, Monticello returned to the reverse, while a new image of Jefferson facing forward was featured on the obverse.