♪ ♪ >> on a cool spring evening in north carolina a car crash kills a renowned coin collector. he's carrying the crown jewel of his collection, but is it really one of the rarest and most valuable coins in the world or a clever fake? >> just imagine she's sitting there saying to me they say i'm not real, what do you think? >> half a century passes before the man's heirs and the public learn the truth about his precious cargo. >> we sat there on pins and needles, and then the numbers started coming in. [applause] ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ jamie: i'm jamie colby. today i'm in picturesque roanoke, virginia. the name roanoke is believed to become from an algonquin word that means shell money which is very appropriate to the story of this strange inheritance. >> my name is ryan givens. in 1992, my mother died at the age of 79. as executor of her's estate, i found a lockbox in the her closet. jamie: ryan, this is box. >> this is the box she kept it in in her bedroom closet, and she kept it along with other things in this envelope right here. jamie: so it says "this is a changed date," and what else -- "not real"? >> "not the real one."

jamie: changed date, not real. mel v.a.'s note reflected what she'd been told about the coin inside, that it's a clever fake of one of the rarest and most valuable coins ever minted, the 1913 liberty head 5-cent piece. coin expert and auction near paul montgomery wrote a book about the nickels. >> from 1883 to 1912, the liberty head nickel was the design that the u.s. was using for commerce. it was in 1912 that they made the decision to move on to the next design which was the buffalo nickel. at the end of 1912, they really should have stopped making liberty nickels. instead, somebody made five before the dyes were destroyed. jamie: the five nickels are legal tender, but the u.s. treasury has no record of them. >> samuel brown was an employee at the mint at the time when the coins were transitioned to the buffalo head nickel. there's a lot of speculation that sam brown had them made and

put away. jamie: five specimens made their first appearance in chicago at a 1920 convention. the seller? surprise, surprise, samuel brown. >> seven years later the statute of limitations had passed for any crime that might have been committed, so all of a sudden there's a huge story that five coins that had never existed were now going to be at the chicago coin club show. jamie: four years later all five coins are purchased by a single wealthy collector for $3,000. -- $2,000. it's not until the early 1940s in st. louis that the set of five nickels is sold in public again. egypt's king farooq scoops one up for his collection, and the following year so does a prominent coin collector from roanoke, virginia, ryan givens' uncle, george walton. enter the enigmatic benefactor of our "strange inheritance." ryan, tell me more about uncle

george. >> i like to refer to him as a professional collector. he had a pretty decent stamp collection, he had books, almanacs, but coins were his main thing. jamie: truth be told, ryan doesn't know his uncle george well and neither, it seems, does anyone else. he's a lifelong bachelor and successful estate appraiser, a job that keeps him constantly on the move. he lives in a series of hotels from north carolina to florida. exactly how walton came to acquire his 913 nickel -- 1913 nickel is equally murky. the most oft-told story is that in 1946 he trades clash $3,750 worth of gold for the rare nickel. the seller may or may not be an heir to the camel cigarette fortune. >> he said a member of the tobaccoing reynolds family, so we can assume it may have been

r.j. reynolds. >> however he acquires it, the 1913 nickel gives walton a special status on the coin show circuit. >> it was a calling card of sorts, because if you were one of the owners of a 1913 nickel, you were an important collector. jamie: walton plays the role of swaggering, inscrutable collector to the hilt. once he's seen nonchalantly flipping his famous nickel. wasn't he worried about scratching it? his reply: no, because it's a fake. >> the reason being since it's a valuable coin, he used it for disdisplay rather than the real one. jamie: he promises to display the real one at a show in wilson, north carolina, where he's a headliner. with about $250,000 worth of rare coins, he sets out on the drive from roanoke to wilson. nowadays you'd be in some sort of, like, armored truck. >> that's how things were back then. you would never see that today. but wilson was having their first show, so it was going to

be a big deal. jamie: it's march 9th, 1962. ♪ ♪ >> he was almost within the town limits when he was hit by a lady that was driving a car, apparently she'd been drinking. ♪ ♪ >> he was killed instantly.u jamie: george walton was 55 years old. he dies without a will, so his siblings name a bank in roanoke to act as his executor. what was the process? >> the bank sent letters to every bank that they knew in north carolina and virginia and said do you have anything there that belongs to george walton? jamie: once all his collections are reassembled and cataloged, the family gets some shocking news that also sends coin officionados around the world. george walton's 1913 liberty nickel is declared a fake.

>> the nickel had no value, it was just a piece of junk. jamie: a piece of junk? could it be? that's next. >> and now, for our "strange inheritance" quiz question, name the first woman whose portrait appeared on u.s. currency: martha washington, sacajawea or susan b. anthony? susan b. anthony? the answer in a

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♪ ♪ >> so who was the first woman to have her portrait appear on u.s. currency? it's a, martha washington, who appeared on the $1 silver certificate in 1886. jamie: on his way to the a north carolina -- to a north carolina coin show in march 1962, eccentric coin collector george walton dies in a car crash. it's front page news in the coin world. >> george walton was a respected knew mistist. jamie: a new york city auction house is called in to appraise george's collection. >> so they sent a man to evaluate all the coins. it took approximately 2-3 weeks. jamie: how much did the family get for what was sold? >> total came to over 850,000. it set a record for an individual collection.

jamie: it would have been even more, maybe $60,000 more, if not for the stunning pronouncement that walton's prize 1913 nickel is a phony. because the 3 in 1913 is unlike any font used by the u.s. mint, stacks concludes the date has been altered. >> there were so many altered dates out there, it wasn't difficult to take another liberty head coin such as the 1910 and alter the 0 to look like a 3. jamie: in fact, walton has a number of suspect currencies in his collection. so many that the bank feels it needs to notify the secret service. >> the secret service came and took some of the items that he had because they were either counterfeit, altered or illegal to own. jamie: stacks declared the nickel a fake. >> right. jamie: but the secret service said, keep it, it's okay? >> it was not totally illegal to have an altered date, but if you

tried to sell it to someone, that was illegal. jamie: the secret service returns the nickel but warns the family never to try to pass it off as the real mccoy. in the meantime, george walton's reputation as an an esteemed coin collector takes a posthumous beating. >> it was just a piece of junk, so it was put in with the odds and ends. so my mom picked up the 1913, she was born in 1913, so that could have been reason. my other thought was she wanted it put away permanently -- jamie: to protect his reputation? >> right. in other words, try to keep it from getting any worse. jamie: melva givens never wavers in her belief that her brother george had the real nickel somewhere in his vast coin collection. but she accepts that the one in her closet really is a fake. >> she had some coin magazines, newspaper articles that kind of kept up with other 1913s, so she knew he had it, she just

couldn't find i. jamie: she's not the only one who's looking. everyone in coin collecting circles is wondering where the vanished nickel has gone. some assume it must still be by the said of the road where walton crashed and show up at that spot with metal detectors. over the decades the nickel enters into american cultural lore. it's even the subject of tv episodes on hawaii 5-0 and the hardy boys. then in 1992 melva passes away at the age of 79. >> where i was executor of her estate, is so it was up to me, of course, to go through what she had and split things up between my brother and my sisters. she had a box of items in her closet, and i got the box out. the nickel was there. jamie: ryan takes the envelope with the nickel in it and places

it on his night stand. >> i used to look at it late at night. one time i just imagined she's sitting there saying to me they say i'm not real. what do you think? jamie: with each passing year, the 1913 liberty legend grows and so does the value of the four confirmed specimens. in 1996 one becomes the first coin to sell for over $1 million. then in april 2003, a cub reporter on a local feature assignment sparks the most stunning turn of events ever in the coin world. everything the experts thought they knew about the most famous coin in the world was wrong. >> i wasn't looking to find the million dollar nickel. i was looking to tell a good story. jamie: that's next on "strange inheritance". >> for this "strange inheritance" quiz question, you might want to get up close to your television set. one of the coins you're looking

at is a fake 1913 liberty nickel. the other is genuine. can you tell which is is real one? hint: the numbers tell the story:

>> take one more look. can you tell which is the real 1913 liberty head nickel? it's b. stay tuned to find out why. ♪ ♪ jamie: one of the five super rare 1913 liberty head nickels has been missing for decades. ever since george walton's was declared a fake after his death in a car crash in 1962. 41 years later, in 2003, paul

montgomery's company is trying to come up with a way to raise excitement for a coin show that summer in baltimore. >> our publicist remembered that it was the 90th anniversary of the making of the 1913 nickel. we thought it would be a nice thing to have a reunion for all the coins. jamie: that prompts another brainstorm. what about a $1 million reward for that fifth nickel regardless of the condition it was in? >> i said, well, sure, i guess i'd pay a million bucks even if it had a hole in it. jamie: the press picks up on the story, and within days a reader of the roanoke times calls the newsroom suggesting a local angle. >> somebody had said he knew george walton when he lived in roanoke. we had our research librarian at the roanoke times start digging up information on mr. walltop's relatives. -- mr. walton's relatives. ryan knew about nickel. he didn't know about the million dollar reward. jamie: adams' pursuit of a good

story sets in motion a series of extraordinary events. >> adams also contacted the editor of "coin world." she asked him if he knew where the altered coin was, so she finally got in contact with me and said we'd like to have that altered date coin on display in baltimore. jamie: ryan's uninterested in dredging up the bogus walton nickel tale. but that 90-year-old lady is calling out to him again. >> so i asked or my brother and my sisters -- asked my brother and my sisters if it was okay to take it up there, and they said fine with them. jamie: wow. did you think to yourself, what if it's real? >> you always wondered, but i wanted more to find it was real for uncle george because it was, basically, his reputation. jamie: on july 30, 2003, he drives from roanoke, virginia, to baltimore and meets with his siblings to show paul montgomery the nickel. >> i was ready to tell them that

their coin wasn't genuine, but at the same time you always want to meet someone that has history in the business. jamie: but once he has the coin in his hands, paul montgomery does a double take. he was expecting to see a fake, but this doesn't look like a fake. paul invites jeff garrett, who has a pedigree as solid as his own, and four other experts to assess the nickel's authenticity. >> he says i think we found coin. >> they were the coin experts. and you try to get some indication from their expression as to whether it's real or not. but they didn't really show any. so i was a little nervous. jamie: this convention holds an unprecedented opportunity that stacks' auction house didn't have in 1963; to to compare george walton's nickel with the four others that had already been authenticated. >> we spent 45 minutes talking about the different nuances of

the coin. jamie: the experts hone in on that strange 3. what shocks them is that it's identical on all five coins. >> took a long time, but finally paul called us over and they had all decided that it was real. ♪ ♪ jamie: the very defect that caused stacks to declare walton's nickel phony proves four decades later that it has to be real. what's more, it's mint condition condition -- its mint condition and incredible story make it worth much more than the million dollar bounty. >> i am the only one in the industry has gotten to tell a family who thought they had nothing that, indeed, they have millions of dollars, and that is the best thing that happened to me in my career.

jamie: the givens' are newly-minted millionaires. >> it was almost like having a lottery ticket. jamie: all they need to do is cash in. but not so fast. that's next on

>> now back on "strange inheritance." jamie: in july, 2003, ryan givens and his siblings find out that "strange inheritance" they thought was fake is real, they could cash in for millions. >> it is clear, this was a family not interested in selling the coin, ryan would tell you, he would rather have the coin because he loved having it in the family. jamie: a loan it to american new association, they display it on a museum, in 2013, the liberty head nickel 100 birthday is

approaching. >> we relize we're not getting younger, we knew we would have to sell it, it was part of my mom's estate. any one of us could not hold on to it. jamie: he is introduceed to ceo of heritage auction. >> the 1913 nickel is one of the most famous coins there is, for an opportunity to handle one, it is like a paintsing collector getting the mona lisa. >> heritage set date of april 25, 2013 in chicago, fitting since that is where 5 liberty head nickles were revealed in 1920. >> auction shut down, and said we're going to prepare for this special offering, we sat there, then numbers started climbing. >> 180, 190, 190,000. jamie: jeff garrett, one of the

experts, decides to place his own bid with another collector, larry lee. >> in audience, and i sent a text to larry, i said this coin will sell in about 15 minutes last chance to bid, and almost half jokingly, he calls me, he said, what do you think it will bring, i bid 2.1. 2. jamie: jeff and larry bid against another collector. it rises by 100,000 each bid. >> sold. >> jeff and larry win the auction. >> how much did they pay for the nickles? >> total price came to 3.2 million. >> almost surreal for personal perspective, it was like chance to handle one of the few great coins. >> layer lee, now the nickel's owner mutts on display at this

coin shop in panama city, florida, the givens siblings split the net proceeds four-ways, and donate $100,000 in honor of uncle george. any regret in not waiting? >> if you hold on to it it will keep growing and growing, but how long do you think you will live to ain't jo wasn't to -- e. jamie: george himself made noises about knowing of a 6th 1913 liberty head nickel out there somewhere. we can't know for sure how many 1913 liberties were minted, think about that if you inherit some of grandma's old stuff. i am jamie colby for stpraeufrpblg inhestrangeintertt take it with you.

jamie: do you have a "strange inheritance" story you would like to share with us? we would love to hear it, send nothing.mail or go tour web good night. . >> an 8-year-old gets a very strange inheritance. >> when my dad died everyone was heart broken. >> what does a guy do with a winery? >> the funny thing is i would tell my friend's parents and they would totally freak out. >> talk about getting your feet wet in a new business. >> that is really good. >> but how does the family keep it from dying on the vine? >> i didn't know anything about wine except they like to drink it. >> so what's the heir going to do when he grows up? >> trying to prove i'm not the owner's kid who just gets handed these things.