ANSWER
A Racketeer Nickel refers to certain "Liberty Head" nickels minted in 1883. These nickels featured a brand new design, with the head of Lady Liberty on the front and a Roman numeral V on the back. The big problem with these nickels is that the design did not include the word "cents" anywhere on the coin. This might not have been a problem, except that the new nickel also looked very much like a $5 gold coin, except that it wasn't gold.
This is where the story of Josh Tatum comes in. Josh Tatum was an enterprising young man from Boston who took a thousand of these new nickels to a jeweler friend of his to have them gold plated. He then took these nickels around town and spent them. Typically, he would buy a five cent cigar and pay for it with one of his gold-plated nickels. In most cases the shopkeeper would take the coin and return $4.95 in change. The first batch of nickels went over so well that he took a few thousand more to his jeweler for plating, then took his show on the road, heading down to New York.
As you might expect, the authorities eventually caught up with Josh Tatum and brought him to trial. Several shopkeepers were called to testify, and for each one the defense asked one simple question, which was whether the defendant ever asked for change. Every single shopkeeper testified that he had not. While such an approach might sound risky, the defense was quite certain that every single shopkeeper would testify that the defendant had not asked for change. The reason: Josh Tatum was a deaf-mute. Since he never asked for change, or said that the coin was anything other than a nickel, the court concluded that the clerks had made the error in giving him too much change. Josh Tatum was found innocent.
Later in 1883 the design of the nickel was altered to include the word "cents".
WHO GOT IT RIGHT: Robert Walker, Marc Quinlivan, Chris Bowen, Bob Milligan, Cindi Lou, James Forsyth, Tom Adams, and JP Weigt.
