Rare 1913 nickel goes for $3,172,500 during an auction Friday. The Nickel goes for a lot more than five cents.

"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 Miss Liberty coin was one of only five ever made, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Its former owner, George Walton, conveniently died in the 1962 crash en route to a coin show. Appraisers originally 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 rare 1913 nickel goes for $3,172,500 and wasn't authenticated until 2003. Almost 100 years later, the coin was authenticated and worth millions.

"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)."

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

Researchers believe that the coin was produced by a Mint employee. He made five coins.

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