1938

The 1938 Jefferson nickel is the first year of Felix Oscar Schlag's design, which replaced the Buffalo nickel after the Mint's public design competition. Schlag was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1891, educated at the Munich University of Fine Arts, and emigrated to the United States in 1929. By 1938 he was working as a sculptor in Chicago when the Treasury Department announced the competition early that year, open to all American sculptors and offering a $1,000 prize. The Mint received 390 model submissions. The competition rules required an authentic portrait of Jefferson on the obverse and a representation of Monticello (Jefferson's historic home near Charlottesville) on the reverse, and Schlag's submission won. He received the $1,000 prize in April 1938.

Schlag's original Monticello reverse was a dramatic three-quarters perspective view of the building, an innovative composition that the Federal Commission of Fine Arts rejected. The Commission also objected to Schlag's stylized Art Deco lettering and demanded traditional Roman script. Per the competition rules, Schlag had to revise the design without additional compensation. He submitted revised models in July 1938 with a straight-on architectural rendering of Monticello, the version that became the standard reverse for the next 65 years. Production commenced in September 1938, and the first coins reached circulation in November. The Jefferson nickel would remain Schlag's only coin design. He died in 1974, and his initials FS were finally added below the shoulder truncation in 1966 (28 years after the design's introduction, far past the typical timeframe for adding designer credit).

Philadelphia delivered 19,496,000 nickels in the short remaining months of 1938. The coin is common in circulated grades and readily available in Mint State, with abundant examples preserved by collectors who recognized first-year-of-issue significance and bought rolls at the time of release. The auction record stands at $3,562 for an MS67+ sold on eBay in January 2023.

The Full Steps designation governs collector demand for the modern Jefferson nickel series. PCGS defines Full Steps as a coin grading MS60 or better with at least five complete steps on Monticello, where steps that join or fuse together do not count. The step area divides into four distinct sections that specialists track: the Plinth (base of the four columns), the Stylobate (the walking surface leading into the residence), the Steps proper (individual lines sandwiched between the stylobate and the foundation), and the Foundation (the thicker segment at the base). In PCGS holders, Non-Full Steps coins outnumber Full Steps coins by approximately 2.43 to 1, with the typical certified grade being MS65 with or without the FS designation. The 1938 first-year coins benefited from fresh dies that produced relatively crisp step detail, and Gem-quality 1938 Full Steps examples are achievable through specialist channels at modest premiums over non-FS pieces.