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Fact Check: Russian Artist’s Modified Version of US $1 Coin Viral with Misleading Claims

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A 30-second viral video, showing a minted 1921 American coin with a detachable mini-sword and a secret vault, is doing the rounds on social media. On one side of the coin, we can see a knight and a maiden, and the sword is being used as a key to open the vault, carved in the window. Many users are sharing the post claiming that it is a $1 coin with a secret vault from 1921. 

A Facebook user posted the viral video with a caption: A coin of US $1 with a sword that unlocks the secret vault from 1921.

You can find the post here.

The video is quite viral on Twitter as well. 

FACT CHECK

NewsMobile fact-checked the viral video, and found it to be misleading.  

We noticed some people have commented on Twitter that the video is by a Russian coin maker Roman Booteen. 

One particular tweet that caught our attention was from a profile @fakehistoryhunt. The user commented that although the coin is from 1921, the interactive display and carvings were done in 2018 by a Russian artist named Roman Booteen. The user even shared a Facebook video link. 

Clicking on the link in the tweet led us to an October 20, 2018 video, posted on Facebook by the artist himself, with a caption: “Now it’s possible to take a sword by fingers, without tools.” The video in the post matches exactly with the viral video. 

So, we performed a Google Keyword Search to identify the artist. And our search led us to the official website of Roman Booteen. The about section of his website states: “Based in Russia, rising star Roman Booteen (spelt Butin) maintains a mysterious level of anonymity while producing hobo nickel creations. His carvings include pop culture figures, and he often plays with exaggerating and softening the facial features of his characters giving them a real sense of personality.”

The Instagram handle mentioned on the website redirected us to Booteen’s official Instagram profile. We found the same video uploaded there as well, dated September 23, 2020.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Roman (@romanbooteen)

Conducting a Reverse Image Search of the video keyframes, we traced a  YouTube video, dated April 10, 2019, with a title: Coins Have Hidden Booby Traps And Secret Levers. The video is posted by a verified page named Art Insider. The description of the video reads: This artist uses coins to create intricate pieces of art. Roman Booteen is an artist from Russia, who carves Zippo cases and transforms the US Morgan dollar into one-of-a-kind mechanical works of art.

The video keyframes from 00:38 to 00:48 match exactly with the ones in the viral video, proving that the viral video is not recent and that the coin is a modified version of 1921 make. 

Therefore, based on our investigation, we can conclusively say that the viral video claiming to show a $1 coin from 1921 is misleading.  

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