Worn buffalo nickels

tjkillian

I don't normally do modern coins, but buffalo nickels are really cool. Anyway, I am helping a friend out with some coins he had stashed away. I looks like the coins came from bank rolls from the 1960s. There are about 500 buffalo nickels, most in very worn condition. Over half of the nickels have no dates!! Is it really THAT common that worn buffalo nickels have no dates? I know they were notorious for wearing quickly, but THAT quickly? Or did I get a particulary bad lot of them? About 5% of the dateless ones are type I, which also is interesting for me. The other ones have only a slight partial date, except for some 1935, 1936, and 1937 dated ones.

Would it hurt the dateless ones to use "nic-a-date" on them? Or am I just wasting a perfectly good nickel by using it?

These nickels look worse than any other coins I have seen in my life. Most worn Lincolns have dates, in fact, I've never even seen a dateless small cent.

Tom

Hedger

Although the artwork is beautiful the overall design was poor for daily commerce as these nickels were heavily circulated. Back then you could buy alot of stuff with five cents. It is common to see them w/o dates and using acid or nick o date will not bring anymore value to them. But if you're curious about dates you could try it for fun. Dateless buffalo nickels are not sought after and I had a bunch at one time and spent them all. I kept the ones with dates and tried to do a buffalo set but the coins are so hard to come by in even Fine in ealier dates that I gave it up. The asking prices are outrageous for decent quality scarcer date buffs. This is why you could use nick o date or acid to see what dates you have for fun and maybe put them in a folder for a conversational piece.

Neptune

I got a big bag of them at flea market for about $17, and had fun sorting them into a little starter collection (two, in fact). It will be a nice thing to give to my grandchildren. The ones with no dates, I nic-a-dated, and found a lot of good dates like that. I also found a lot of duplicate 'not so hot' dates. Better dates w/acid aren't worth near as much unless you have a really rare date. Heck - what have you got to lose - they aren't worth anything much they are anyway - may as well find out what they are. Let us know how it comes out.