1914

1914 was the first full year of Buffalo nickel production, with Philadelphia delivering 20,664,463 coins using the modified Type 2 reverse. The year settled the Fraser design into its permanent form and began the 24-year production run that would continue through 1938. Mint records show the year as straightforward, with no major production disruptions and no significant die varieties beyond the famous 1914/3 overdate (cataloged separately).

The 1914 Philadelphia coin is common in all grades and readily available in Mint State. Strike characteristics vary by die state, with earlier strikes showing crisper bison hair detail and later strikes showing the softer definition typical of worn dies. Gem-quality examples exist in adequate numbers for specialist demand and are priced at modest premiums over common-date baselines.

World War I began in Europe on July 28, 1914 when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia following the June 28 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. The United States would not enter the conflict until April 1917. The nickels struck in Philadelphia that summer circulated through a country still at peace, reading newspaper coverage of distant European battlefields without any sense that America would eventually join the fighting. The Buffalo nickel would become, in some measure, a witness to the entire war: struck before American involvement, during the Treasury's management of wartime coinage production, and after the armistice closed the conflict in 1918.