Buffalo Nickels (1913–1938)

Fraser, MacVeagh, and the Commission

Theodore Roosevelt's conviction that American coins were artistically unworthy of the republic had set off a transformation that began with his private correspondence with sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens in 1905 and produced redesigned gold coins in 1907, the Lincoln cent in 1909, and the Indian Head eagle and double eagle in the same years. By 1911 that momentum had reached the nickel. The 25-year statutory waiting period that would ordinarily protect an established design from replacement was expiring, and Treasury Secretary Franklin MacVeagh had no interest in leaving Charles Barber's Liberty Head nickel in place simply because no one had acted to change it. MacVeagh bypassed Barber entirely and commissioned sculptor James Earle Fraser.

Fraser was a student of Saint-Gaudens and had grown up near the Western frontier. He was already known for his bronze sculpture The End of the Trail, depicting an exhausted warrior slumped on a weary horse, and he brought to the nickel commission a sensibility about the American West and its peoples that no Mint engraver of the era possessed. He proposed a Native American portrait on the obverse and an American bison on the reverse. MacVeagh was impressed. The design was approved in December 1912, and Fraser received $2,500 for his work plus additional compensation for revisions through early 1913. The coin entered production and reached circulation on March 4, 1913.¹

The Models: Iron Tail, Two Moons, and a Third Who Remains Unconfirmed

Fraser was consistent over the decades in saying that the obverse portrait was not a likeness of any single individual but a composite intended to represent Native American people as a type. He identified Iron Tail, a Lakota Sioux chief known for his participation in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, as the strongest influence, writing in 1931 that he was "the best Indian head I can remember." He consistently named Two Moons, a Cheyenne chief, as a second model. The third has never been definitively established. Fraser gave different names at different points, including Big Tree, a Kiowa, and in his own words could not recall with certainty who the third individual was. Multiple individuals came forward over the years claiming the distinction; Fraser's own correspondence suggests he received characteristics from several people and never considered the portrait a portrait in the strict sense.²

The bison on the reverse was modeled after Black Diamond, a bull bison at the Central Park Menagerie in New York City. Burdette's research confirmed that Black Diamond was the specific animal, despite Fraser's own statements sometimes placing his sketching sessions at the Bronx Zoo, where Black Diamond never lived. The proximity of the Central Park Menagerie to Fraser's studio makes the Central Park identification the more plausible one. Black Diamond's subsequent history was undignified: no bids were received when he was put up for auction on June 28, 1915; he was then purchased privately for $300 by A. Silz, Inc., a game and poultry dealer, slaughtered on November 17, and sold as "Black Diamond Steaks" at $2 a pound. A taxidermist mounted his head and fashioned his hide into a thirteen-foot automobile robe.³

The Hobbs Problem and the Release

The Buffalo nickel's path to circulation was slowed by the Hobbs Manufacturing Company of Worcester, Massachusetts, which produced coin-detection mechanisms for vending machines and maintained that Fraser's design would defeat its devices. Months of correspondence followed through most of 1912, with Hobbs demanding modifications that Fraser considered destructive to the design's artistic integrity. MacVeagh resolved the dispute in February 1913 by conducting what he described as a legal-style hearing and deciding to release the coins over Hobbs's objections, noting that no other firm had complained and that only the most serious business considerations should stand in the way of an improvement to the coinage. Barber, who complained separately that Fraser's design elements were too large and left insufficient room for inscriptions, also found his objections overruled.⁴

Two Types: The Mound and the Plain

The first Buffalo nickels of 1913 showed the bison standing on a raised ground mound. The denomination FIVE CENTS and the E PLURIBUS UNUM scroll sat at the high point of this mound and wore away rapidly in circulation. Within months the Mint recognized that the design was functionally impractical: coins came back from commerce with the denomination illegible while otherwise still usable. Barber prepared a modified reverse that recessed the ground to a thinner, flat line, dropping the denomination inscription into a lower position protected by the surrounding field. This revision was introduced mid-year in 1913, producing the two distinct types that every Buffalo nickel collector must account for: Type 1 (Mound) from early 1913 and Type 2 (Plain) from mid-1913 through 1938. Both types were produced at all three mints in 1913.⁵

The Persistent Problem of the Date

Recessing the denomination was a practical success; the date was another matter. The date on the Buffalo nickel sat at one of the highest points of the obverse relief, positioned at the base of the Indian's neck where it was fully exposed to the friction of commerce. It wore away faster than virtually any other numeral on any American coin of the era. Well-circulated examples with completely legible four-digit dates are genuinely more desirable than those without, and a significant portion of Buffalo nickels found in old jars and accumulations are entirely dateless, legal tender worth five cents but of minimal numismatic interest. The Mint made several attempts to address the problem through design modification, none of which fully solved it.

Strike Weakness Defines Every Purchasing Decision in This Series

Strike weakness is the dominant technical challenge for Buffalo nickel collectors. The series as a whole struck poorly compared to the Jefferson nickel that followed it, and many dates, particularly from Denver and San Francisco in the years 1918 through 1934, are effectively unavailable with fully struck central details. The high points most prone to weakness are the Indian's cheekbone, the hair above the ear, and the bison's horn, hip, and tail fringe. Many full-luster uncirculated examples show soft detail at these locations that is an artifact of the original strike rather than subsequent handling. Grading Buffalo nickels requires attention to both surface preservation and strike sharpness, two variables that move somewhat independently.⁶

Matte Proofs were struck from 1913 through 1916 in quantities totaling approximately 5,959 pieces across four years. Brilliant Proofs were produced in 1936 and 1937 with a combined total of approximately 10,189 pieces. The matte Proofs are distinguished by their grainy, satin-like surfaces rather than the mirrored fields of traditional Proofs, and deceptively well-struck business strikes have sometimes been misidentified as matte Proofs by casual observers. All genuine matte Proofs are expensive in any condition and require careful authentication; well-preserved examples regularly sell for $25,000 and above.

Key Dates and the Scarcity Landscape

No Buffalo nickels were struck in 1922, 1932, or 1933, creating three gap years in an otherwise continuous series. The 1931-S has an unusual history: only 194,000 pieces had been struck when acting Mint Director Mary O'Reilly became alarmed by the low mintage figure and ordered additional production to suppress speculation. The San Francisco Mint struck approximately 1,006,000 more nickels through the balance of the year, bringing the total to 1,200,000. The result is a coin that is genuinely scarce in circulated grades but relatively available in Mint State, because collectors and dealers were already saving roll quantities of low-mintage issues by 1931. It functions as a meaningful collecting challenge in Fine and below; it is simply not difficult to obtain uncirculated.

The 1926-S, with 970,000 pieces struck, is the only date-mint combination in the series with a mintage below one million and is the primary low-mintage key in business strikes. San Francisco issues of the teens and early 1920s present what specialists call conditional rarities, dates with large enough original mintages that circulated examples are findable, but so heavily worn in the typical surviving example that well-struck Gem (Mint State 65 or finer) specimens are genuinely elusive or effectively unknown. The 1918, 1920, 1924, and 1926 San Francisco issues fall into this category. Denver coins from the same years present the additional obstacle of characteristically weak strikes even before considering circulation wear.⁷

The 1918/17-D Overdate

The most valuable regular-strike variety in the series is the 1918/17-D overdate, in which the 8 in the date was punched over a 7 from an unused 1917-dated die. The underlying 7 is visible beneath the 8, and the variety was identified in the early 1930s by collectors who noticed the anomaly in circulating coins. The Denver Mint had economized by repunching existing dies rather than preparing new ones, a wartime production practice that also produced a 1914/13-D overdate and several other punching irregularities. Only a few thousand examples of the 1918/17-D are estimated to survive in all grades, the great majority circulated. The variety commands premiums placing it in the five-figure range in Fine and higher, and authentication is essential as altered examples are documented.⁸

The 1937-D Three-Legged Buffalo

The most famous error coin in the series, and one of the most recognizable production mistakes in all of American coinage, was created at the Denver Mint in 1937 when a reverse die damaged by clashing was aggressively polished rather than replaced. The polishing removed the bison's right front foreleg entirely, leaving only the hoof where it meets the ground line, and also created a pockmarked texture on the bison's shoulder and hindquarters. The damaged die was kept in use rather than discarded, reportedly because the Denver Mint was under pressure to maintain production levels and Buffalo nickel dies were being used longer than protocol recommended. The error was not caught until coins had already reached circulation, by which point an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 pieces had been struck.

The Three-Legged Buffalo was not widely recognized as a distinct variety for some years after its production. By the time collector attention focused on it, most examples had been heavily circulated. Well-struck Gem examples are rare; the majority of certified specimens are in lower circulated grades where the missing leg is clearly visible but surfaces show significant wear. Genuine examples display specific markers: complete absence of the right front leg with the hoof remaining on the ground line, characteristic roughness in the shoulder area, and die-polish texture in the fields consistent with Denver Mint die preparation of that period. The variety is widely counterfeited by filing the leg from genuine four-legged coins; authentication by PCGS or NGC is essential for any purchase. A related but less dramatic 1936-D variety, produced by the same over-polishing process, is sometimes called the 3½-Legs Buffalo: the front leg is partially rather than fully removed, producing an intermediate effect that is genuine but commands lower premiums than the fully legless 1937-D.⁹

The End of the Series and What Replaced It

The 25-year statutory minimum production requirement was met in 1938, and Mint officials who had never fully resolved the striking and wear problems of the Buffalo nickel were ready to move on. In January 1938 the Mint announced an open competition for a new five-cent design, specifying that it show President Thomas Jefferson on the obverse and Jefferson's home Monticello on the reverse. Felix Schlag, a German-immigrant sculptor, won the competition and received $1,000. The last Buffalo nickels were struck in April 1938 at Denver, the only mint to produce the denomination that final year. The Jefferson nickel entered production on October 3, 1938 and reached circulation on November 15.¹⁰

More than 1.2 billion Buffalo nickels had been produced across the 26-year run, a figure that distributes thinly across 64 date-mint combinations, the known blank years, and 26 years of hard commercial circulation. The series remains one of the most actively collected in American numismatics. Its combination of a genuinely great artistic design, documented striking challenges that reward careful selection, a varied key date landscape, and famous errors at both ends of the production run gives it depth enough to engage collectors at every level of experience and resources.

Building the Set

For the type collector, two coins complete the Buffalo nickel entry: one Type 1 and one Type 2. Type 2 examples of common dates are available at modest prices in all grades through Gem. Type 1 examples are meaningfully scarcer in the higher circulated and uncirculated grades because of the design's poor performance in commerce and the additional striking difficulties of the mound reverse. A date set of all 64 struck date-mint combinations is a realistic collecting goal with the right budget; Lange describes the series as "fewer than 70 coins to assemble in a standard set," the precise figure depending slightly on how certain transitional issues are classified; the 1926-S is the primary financial obstacle in circulated grades, with the conditional rarities of the S-Mint teens and early 1920s in Gem requiring both patience and premium payment. The matte Proofs of 1913 through 1916 are expensive standalone acquisitions but not part of the standard date set. David W. Lange's The Complete Guide to Buffalo Nickels provides the standard specialist reference for the series, with Bowers's A Guide Book of Buffalo and Jefferson Nickels covering both die variety cataloguing and market context.