What year were counterfeit nickels made?

Answer 1

The most famous circulating counterfeit nickels were made in 1954, when a man named Francis L. Henning produced over half a million fake nickels dated 1939, 1944, 1946, 1947 and 1953. Today these coins are universally known as "Henning nickels".

Henning was caught because he used the same reverse design for all five dates. He forgot (or didn't realize) that unlike the other dates, genuine 1944 nickels carried a large mint mark over the dome of Monticello. The large mint mark identified them as special "war nickels" that were made from late 1942 to 1945 using a different alloy because of wartime metal shortages.

Henning never fully explained why he chose to counterfeit so many low-value coins; it's thought that he may have hoped to escape detection by going "under the radar" by faking coins that few people would be curious about.

By the time he was found out, he'd put roughly 100,000 coins into circulation, but said dumped the rest in local rivers when he feared that he would be discovered. Several searches were made after his arrest but fewer than 15,000 of the hoard have ever been recovered.

Racketeer Nickels

Another famous nickel with a history of double fakery occurred in 1883. When the Liberty Head design was introduced the designers felt that it was sufficient to show the denomination as a large V (the Roman numeral for 5) without including the word "cents". Within a short time criminals noted that the coin's size was almost identical to that of a $5 gold piece and began passing off gold-plated nickels as a new $5 coin design. The coins became known as "racketeer nickels".

The Mint quickly modified the coin's reverse to include "cents". People now recognized racketeer nickels as fakes and began collecting them as curios and keepsakes. That led to a demand for more plated "no cents" nickels which still other crooks were happy to supply for years afterwards. In many cases it's extremely difficult to tell the difference between a so-called "genuine racketeer nickel"; i.e. one that was plated before the reverse design was modified, and a "fake racketeer nickel" that was produced years later. These coins remain particularly unusual because the counterfeits became sufficiently collectible that the fakes themselves were also counterfeited!

Other counterfeits

When the existence of 1913 Liberty Head nickels first came to light many counterfeits also turned up. These fakes were most often made by altering a digit on a 1903 or 1910 nickel. Today it's known that only five 1913 Liberty nickels were made and all are accounted for, so very few counterfeits now show up.

A more recent date that's faked was the 1950-D Jefferson nickel. These coins have the lowest mintage (2,630,030) of all Jeffersons. That figure was noticed almost immediately; it's estimated that as many as half of all 1950-D nickels were hoarded shortly after they entered circulation. That hoarding led to price spikes and of course counterfeiting. Like the faked "1913" Liberty nickels, similar dates such as 1958 would be altered; others were created by adding an artificial mint mark. In the 1980s and 1990s many of those early hoards were sold as people cashed in on high prices. As a result not only did counterfeiting effectively stop but the market was flooded to the point where a 1950-D nickel is quite affordable at $5 to $15 depending on condition.