Compadre nails an old one - what is it????

[JMC]

I was working a section of the backyard where we pull in, an old gravel drive. Got a solid it and dug this. The date is 1888 when examined under magnification. No clue what kind of coin it is. The other side is worn smooth from years of being under the gravel. Help please The Compadre nailed this coin with a solid signal, it was about 6 inches down in the pulverised old gravel.

 

[REVIER]

Nice!
http://cointrackers.com/coins/961/1888-liberty-head-v-nickel/

 

[richbat]

Looks like a Large Cent to me.Nice find.

 

[PostalTwo]

1888 thats great! nice stuff man

 

[BeyWolf]

If it's larger than a Quarter and smaller than a Half dollar, then it's a Large Cent.

 

[oneguy]

It's a V nickel.............

 

[BarryL]

Very Nice find That is a V Nichol for sure You did very well

 

[KennyD]

VERY NICE find JMC! Congrats man, thats a keeper for sure!

 

[kaolinwasher]

looks like an 1885 very old looking and would be great in a display

 

[hatpin]

1800 coins in your own backyard. What a good place to learn a machine.

 

[ScottBuckner]

That's a US "V" nickel (the "V" on the reverse being the Roman numeral for 5), which was later replaced by the Buffalo nickel. Don't even try to clean that one up. Nickels are notoriously almost impossible to make presentable when they've been corroding away in the ground for alomst 100 years, as opposed to things with a lot of silver content. NIce find, tho -- and where there's one, there's a pretty good chance there's other stuff from that era there, unless maybe the dirt was trucked in from somewhere else.

 

[dirt doctor]

That's a great find JMC one that doesn't pop up very often Congratulations .

 

[JMC]

Our house is 1883 and the neighborhood became established in the late 1800s. Older homes a block east of us are 1850s. The yard is an interesting place I never know what it is going to give up. Got a strong fully discriminated signal that will require old root cutting to get. Checked it again today and a standard spade would even begin to cut the old tangled roots. May actually have to chop it out with a hand ax.

 

[REVIER]

That's a US "V" nickel (the "V" on the reverse being the Roman numeral for 5), which was later replaced by the Buffalo nickel. Don't even try to clean that one up. Nickels are notoriously almost impossible to make presentable when they've been corroding away in the ground for alomst 100 years, as opposed to things with a lot of silver content.

You're telling me!
I have found only one.
The reverse side is totally blank, this is all that is left of the obverse and it took some detective work to figure out what it was.
JMC...yours is in a 1000 times better shape than this one.

 

[ScottBuckner]

I have found only one.
The reverse side is totally blank, this is all that is left of the obverse and it took some detective work to figure out what it was.
JMC...yours is in a 1000 times better shape than this one.

There's a good reason why those 100+-year-old coins -- especially cents and nickles, and even dimes -- almost always seem to be worn down to the nub: Most everything that was a food staple back then cost no more than a dime, so those coins were in exceptionally heavy circulation, and coins tend to stay in circulation for several decades. Heck, we still occasionally find Jefferson war nickels from the early 1940s in our pocket change today. Barber dimes are especially notorious -- at least for me, anyway -- for being worn to hell and good only for melt value. But at least they don't end up coming out of the ground with their surface corroded to hell like V and Buffalo nickles.