DEADWOOD, SOUTH DAKOTA—The Rapid City Journal reports that a notorious and rare nineteenth-century U.S. coin known as a “Racketeer Nickel” has been identified in the archaeological collections of the Historic Preservation Committee of Deadwood. In 1883, the U.S. Mint issued a five-cent nickel that bore a design similar to five-dollar gold coins then in circulation. Grifters quickly began to gold plate the nickels and passed them off as five-dollar coins. The Racketeer Nickel was recently identified by coin experts Kevin and Margie Akins during their analysis of coins discovered in a 2001 excavation of Deadwood’s Chinatown district. According to Kevin Akins, today fake versions of the nickel abound in online auctions. “It’s pretty easy to plate a nickel,” says Akins. “It makes such a great story, but they’re fakes. None of them has the provenance of this particular coin, the Deadwood Racketeer Nickel.” To read more, go to “America’s Chinatowns.”
