1906 5C Liberty Nickel NGC MS66+

Here’s an attractive—and rare—example of Charles E. Barber’s Liberty head nickel from 1906. Specialists in Barber’s coinage should pay careful attention to this listing and study the images provided. NGC has graded 1 as MS66+ with none finer. PCGS has graded a sole piece as MS67. Collectors Universe prices the 1906 Liberty nickel at $3,500.00 in MS66+.

Numismatic art scholar Cornelius Vermeule presents his opinion on the origins of the Liberty head upon the nickel (1883-1913):

The diademed and wreathed head of Liberty on the obverse was modeled almost verbatim from a Greco-Roman head of Juno or a major personification such as Concordia, a marble cult statue for some shrine in Rome or in the provinces. It so happens that the very head said to have been used as the model for this nickel, which was coined until 1913, [was] the centerpiece in the entrance salon of the premises of Stack’s, the well-known dealers in coins on 57th Street in New York. This Greco-Roman restyling of a Greek head of the fourth century B.C. was on display in the Philadelphia Academy of Art when Charles Barber, George T. Morgan, and other artists for the Mint … admired it and turned its full, grave, if not heavy profile into designs for the coinage.

Chief Mint Engraver Charles E. Barber, who crafted the Liberty head nickel design. Image: Wikimedia Commons.