A 1913 Liberty Head nickel that sold to a phone bidder for $3,737,500 Jan. 7 was the highlight lot of Heritage Auctions’ Florida United Numismatists sale.

Overall, the auction of U.S. coins realized over $36.5 million. All prices recorded here include a 15 percent buyer’s fee.

Heritage said the nickel price ties it as the third highest price ever achieved at public auction for a U.S. coin.

Buyer of the famous nickel, of which just five are known, was anonymous as was the seller, but he or she was described as a prominent East Coast collector.

Reed Hawn of Texas once owned that coin and the pedigree now includes his name on it as an owner of it from 1985 until 1993.

“They call it the Olsen-Hawn coin, which really stresses the importance to me,” Hawn said.

“Not only is it a privilege and honor to own those coins, but an obligation to handle them right.”

He reminisced a bit about owning the coin, but could only joke about who the current owner might be.

The Perth Mint of Australia has recently released the second coin in their series featuring five Great Composers.

The one ounce silver coin features  Frédéric Chopin. The coin is issued on the 200th anniversary of the birth of the celebrated piano genius. The coin's reverse depicts a profile of Frédéric Chopin with a treble clef and music notes in the background.  An inscription along the right edge of the coin reads "Frédéric Chopin 1810 - 1849".

The Perth Mint "P" mint mark also appears. The obverse of the coin depicts the Raphael Maklouf effigy of Queen Elizabeth II with the date "2010".

Each coin contains one ounce of 99.9% silver struck in proof quality. The mintage of the coin is limited to 5,000. Each coin will come in a presentation case with a numbered certificate of authenticity. The offering is priced at AUS $81.36.

Clad coinage was not welcomed by collectors. The copper-nickel clad coins were new and different, but were soundly rejected by numismatists.

Ken Bressett commented, “It all but killed the interest in collecting out of circulation.” Twenty-five years after the introduction of clads, the American Numismatic Association claimed there was nothing to collect in circulation.

The coins certainly did the job they were created to do – get out and circulate – but even though these coins had been around for many years, collectors simply were not interested. The coins were not silver; they were made in large quantities, sometimes in the billions; and many found the pieces with the copper core to be quite unattractive.

This long series of United States coinage had been neglected and ignored for many years, even though there was so much to study, to learn and to enjoy. My book, United States Clad Coinage, published in 1992 by Bowers and Merena, attempted to fill the void of information. Besides giving a background and history of the events leading up to clad coinage, information on collecting, varieties and scarcities was covered.

Some collectors, becoming involved with clad coins, discovered that many of the coins were difficult to find in top grades, or even nice condition. Billions of coins dated 1965, 1966 and 1967 were struck, but a collector could search for a long time and not find any in true Mint State pieces. A few of the coins simply did not turn up in change after months of looking.

After the alleviation of the coin shortage, production dropped off in 1968 and 1969. The 1968-D quarters turned out to be hard to find in change. When I checked change and bank rolls while doing research for my book, I found more 1968-D half dollars than quarters – even though half dollars had disappeared from everyday change and contained a 40-percent silver alloy.

From 1909 to 1942, the Lincoln Cent was composed of 95% copper and 5% tin and zinc. That all changed in 1943, as for the first and only time, a coin was made out of steel, which was quite a contradiction from gold, silver, copper or bronze.

Even before the United States entered the war, there were inklings that the cent, as well as the nickel were in trouble. The nickel was made out of 75% copper. Copper was in huge demand due to its use by defense contractors in the manufacturing process of various supplies and equipment needed in case of the US going to war.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the rumors only grew and in January 1942, The Numismatic Scrapbook Magazine reported that Treasury officials were giving serious consideration to using different metal contents for some coins. The first step occurred on January 23rd, 1942, when the Treasury ordered the removal of all but a trace of tin from the cent from the already small amount that had been in use. The existing supply of strips and planchets were used and it is speculated that cents produced in 1942 were produced of both metal compositions. This small change was expected to save 100,000 pounds of tin.

Throughout 1942, there were repeated attempts and pleas to the public to turn in their cents and nickels. Even with these pleas, the shortages continued and for the last six months of the year the mint scaled back production of cents and nickels. During this time, experiments were conducted with various metal compositions, fibers, plastics and even glass.

Latvia wins the 2010 Coin of the Year Award and Hungary takes home the People’s Choice Award, World Coin News Publisher Scott Tappa announced Jan. 12.

A COTY international panel of judges concluded voting Jan. 8 and the public online voting for the People’s Choice Award ended Jan. 10.

“I would like to congratulate the winners from both rounds of voting,” Tappa said. “What makes the results especially interesting is this is the third time Hungary has won the People’s Choice Award.”

World Coin News will recognize both winners Jan. 30 at the World Money Fair in Berlin.

This year’s competition featuring coins dated 2008 was hotly contested. The COTY winner was chosen in two rounds of voting. The first determined the winners of 10 categories and the second round chose the Coin of the Year from those 10 initial winners.

The Hamas-run ministry of tourism and antiquities in Gaza on Monday announced the discovery of ancient artifacts near the Egyptian border town of Rafah.

"The most important of the findings are 1,300 antique silver coins, both large and small," said Mohammed al-Agha, tourism and antiquities minister in the Islamist-run government.

He said archaeologists had also uncovered a black basalt grinder, a coin with a cross etched on it, and the remains of walls and arches believed to have been built in 320 BC.

They also discovered a "mysterious" underground compartment with a blocked entrance that appeared to be a tomb, Agha said.

The Palestinian Authority has been carrying out archaeological excavations since the 1990s, but this was the first major find to be announced by the Hamas-run government.

If a fingertip-sized circle of 73-year-old copper can be called charismatic, this one is.

An impossibly rare, exceedingly valuable piece of Canadian history will go on the block next month in the form of a 1936 Canadian “dot” penny.

It owes its existence to a historical blip and a monarchic muddle: After King Edward VIII's unexpected abdication in December, 1936, to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson, the Royal Canadian Mint's moulds with his bust on the penny were no longer valid. In the interim, the mint used 1936 George V moulds, stamped with a dimple-like dot to distinguish them from the ones minted before.The penny test-run wasn't deemed a success, however, and the dotted pennies never entered circulation. For decades, the three pennies, along with a few of equally orphaned dimes, were secreted in the mint before being purchased and held for years by collector John Jay Pittman.

For the second time in 30 years, we're in the midst of a classic gold bubble.

There are "gold parties" akin to Tupperware parties across the U.S., where people trade in their gold jewellery and even gold dental fillings for cash.

"Goldbugs," the term for gold-investing zealots, are predicting a gold price of $2,000 (all figures U.S.) per ounce next year. And a rise to as high as $15,000 in years to come – a 15-fold increase over the modern-day record price of $1,086 set on Dec. 3, from which gold has since retreated 11 per cent.

U.S. talk-radio yakkers Glenn Beck and Watergate ex-convict Gordon Liddy have become paid shills for gold vendors. On behalf of an outfit called Rosland Capital, Liddy in TV spots describes gold as "an intrinsically valuable liquid preserver of purchasing power."