Steve,

A fair number of people used the gold plating ploy on the 1883 "V"
nickels. Urban legend indicates that there was a Josh Tatum who was
the most prolific at this ploy. The rumors state that he was a deaf-
mute who "could not" be prosecuted since he never overtly represented
the plated coins as the $5 gold pieces which they "impersonated" so
well with their gold plating.

I doubt that this is all true - if Josh existed and passed around gold
plated nickels and accepted change for $5.00 on a regular basis, then
he was obviously plating the coins for one purpose only - fraud.

On a related topic, where my friends and I guilt of fraud? Somewhere
around 8th grade we would pull boring 1944-D cents from circulation &
use a set of jeweler's files and jeweler's rouge to "convert" these
coins into the very valuable 1914-D cents. We then lightly weathered
this coins by rubbing them in the dirt, etc. After that, we mixed the
coins with our other pocket change and casually spent them.

We never overtly committed fraud with these coins and we never profited
from the conterfeiting operation. On the other hand, we were committing
a fraudulent prank and I'm certain that many innocent folks eventually
noticed our coins in their pocket change and attempted to sell them as
rare 1914-D cents. Considering our young age, it was amazing how quickly
we could produce conterfeits which would easily fool a casual observer.
Even a somewhat serious coin collector could be fooled when he found
the coin in with some change, although he would certainly detect the
fraud if somebody else were attempting to sell the coin to him, a situation
in which he would be at a much higher state of alert for fraud.

We produced these fakes so easily and so quickly that I'm certain we
put over 100 into circulation. Since that was many decades ago, I'm
certain that all of them must have been eventually pulled from circulation
as rare 1914-D coins.

Gideon

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SteveB wrote in message ...
The paragraph below is from the U.S. Treasury website:

http://www.treas.gov/education/faq/c...aits.shtml#q13

Is it illegal to damage or deface coins?

Section 331 of Title 18 of the United States code provides criminal
penalties for anyone who "fraudulently alters, defaces, mutilates
impairs, diminishes, falsifies, scales, or lightens any of the
coins
coined at the Mints of the United States." This statute means that
you may be violating the law if you change the appearance of the
coin and fraudulently represent it to be other than the altered
coin
that it is. As a matter of policy, the U.S. Mint does not promote
coloring, plating or altering U.S. coinage: however, there are no
sanctions against such activity absent fraudulent intent.


The term, "You're Joshing me" came from San Francisco gold days. A deaf
mute named Josh would gold clad coins that had a V on the back. He would
just hand them to the merchant, and they would give him change for $5. In
those days, coins weren't as standardized, and a lot of different coins were
used.

He did no time because the merchants made the mistake and gave him the wrong
change, and he never represented the coin to be $5.

Steve