A nationwide bounty hunt is under way – with a $1 million reward. The target: a 90-year-old nickel.

After being born of questionable, some say clandestine, circumstances, five 1913 Liberty Head nickels surfaced in the 1920s. Four are accounted for, but the fifth has been missing for at least 40 years.

“There’s a little bit of gimmick to it,” concedes Paul Montgomery, president of Bowers and Merena Galleries of Wolfeboro, N.H., which is offering the reward. “But it’s all about trying to find the coin.”

The Liberty Head Nickel was minted from 1883 to 1912. It was replaced the following year by the Indian or Buffalo Nickel.

However, five Liberty Nickels were minted illegally, possibly by a mint official. They were never placed into circulation and even were considered illegal to own for many years because they were not a regular issue.

Two are in private collections, two are in museums, but the fifth has confounded collectors for decades.

“Everybody in the industry would love to see it,” said Montgomery.

As one story goes, the coin may have been owned by a North Carolina dealer killed in a car crash in 1962. Part of the mystery is a theory that the dealer was carrying the coin to a buyer named Reynolds.

People have searched the roadside, said Lawrence Lee, curator of the American Numismatic Association Money Museum, which owns one of the nickels.

“He was was killed on his way there,” Lee said. “Did the Reynolds’ family actually get it? Was it in the car wreck?”

A larger question might be: Was it an authentic coin?

Beth Deisher, editor of Coin World magazine in Sidney, Ohio, has researched the missing coin for several years.

Its whereabouts are “a great mystery,” she said.

Deisher said a nickel was among the coins recovered from the car wreckage, but it was not one of the original five. Someone had altered the date to make it look like a 1913 specimen, she said.

The dealer, George Walton, “claimed to have access to the genuine, through a client named Reynolds,” she said. “We believe he had an altered date coin he often carried with him and put on display.”

She said she has found no evidence that Walton was taking coins to a Mr. Reynolds. “He was killed at an intersection in Enfield, N.C., not far from where he lived,” she said. “He probably on his way home from a coin show.”

She said the last confirmed owner wrote in the 1940s that he had traded the coin to a Mr. Reynolds. She said no one even knows who Mr. Reynolds is.

Lee said many have claimed to have the missing coin.

“There are lots of counterfeits,” he said. “We have maybe 50 examples in the museum.”

Often, he said, someone will scratch a 1910 nickel to make the date read 1913. But the genuine coins have other identifying features, he said.

In 1996, Bowers and Merena auctioned one of the 1913 nickels for $1.4 million. It was the first coin to sell for more than $1 million. That’s why the comapny is offering at least $1 million for the missing one.

The renewed hunt coincides with the American Numismatic Association’s convention in Baltimore this summer. Bowers and Merena is the convention’s official auctioneer.

Montgomery said it’s possible someone has the coin and doesn’t know its significance, but not likely.

Lee believes publicity will get people to start looking for it again, and maybe it will show up in an estate or a grandmother’s attic. He figures if the owner knows about the coin, “they couldn’t resist, sooner or later, bragging to somebody or selling it to somebody.”

Deisher said the coin’s whereabouts are anyone’s guess and she has an important tip for the bounty hunters.

“If anybody thinks they have the coin, don’t try to shine it or clean it,” she said. “Treat it very, very gingerly because cleaning it would harm it.”

On the Web:

American Numismatic Association: www.money.org

Bowers and Merena: www.BowersandMerena.com

Coin World: www.coinworld.com

AP-ES-05-26-03 1432EDT