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A rare 1913 Liberty Head nickel, stored unceremoniously in a closet for 40 years, fetched more than $3 million at an auction in Schaumburg.

“This is one of the greatest coins at that price range,” Jeff Garrett, of Lexington, Ky., told reporters after he bought the coin for $3,172,500 in partnership with Larry Lee of Panama City, Fla.

The coin was one of only five ever made. Starting with suspicious origins, the coin later survived a fiery car crash and was declared a fake before its eventual authentication.

Its former owner, George Walton, died in the 1962 crash en route to a coin show. Appraisers told his family the coin was fake, but his sister kept it anyway.

“She put it in a padded envelope and wrote, ‘It’s not real,'” said Walton’s niece, Cheryl Myers of Virginia, one of four heirs working with Heritage Auctions. “She died … never knowing she had the real thing.”

The 1913 Liberty nickel is “one of the famous American coins” because it was never supposed to have been minted, said Douglas Mudd of the American Numismatic Association.

The U.S. Mint had stopped making the Miss Liberty nickels in 1912. Researchers believe a renegade Mint worker produced the five coins himself, drumming up interest with a 1919 ad stating that he was willing to pay $500 for a 1913 Liberty Head coin, he said.

“No one had ever heard of such a thing, and it caused a stir,” Mudd said.

In 1920, the former Mint worker displayed the five coins at an ANA convention in Chicago, and sold them over the next few years.

Walton’s heirs decided to have their nickel reassessed in 2003.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” said David Hall of the Professional Coin Grading Service, among the first to confirm its authenticity. “The minute I looked at it, I was 99.9 percent (certain).”

according to chicagotribune.com