Why wasn't the date wear problem on the Buffalo Nickel ever addressed?

291fifth

The Buffalo Nickel had the same date wear problem as the Standing Liberty Quarter, yet, unlike the quarter, the problem of wear on the date was never addressed. Why was this?

Is it possible that, because the nickel wore more slowly than the quarter, the problem was not recognized as being serious during the circulation life of the nickel prior to 1938?

cmerlo1

Maybe so. My (non-scientific) theory- I believe there are 1930's-carved hobo nickels on teens-dated buffalo nickels that still have the date. Since they still had dates when carved, that could indicate the dates lasted into the 1930's for the earlier nickels...

koynekwest

Both of the 1913 dates but especially the Variety One had dates that wore as quickly as the SL 25c. It's not unusual to find the Variety One coins that grade F-VF with nearly illegible dates. Dates after this were a little more durable-the date numerals were thicker and cut more deeply into the master dies with the first major change in this regard coming in 1926 along with the reworking of the entire obverse die.

steveben

i figured the jefferson nickel took care of it.

oih82w8

Perhaps coin collectors were not as popular then as they are now...besides, it's only a nickel and was identifiable as such even without the dates.

291fifth

Remember that they did take care of the problem with "FIVE CENTS" being in raised letters on a mound within a few months of the coin's issue. Just why didn't they address the same problem with the date?

BillJones

The expected useful life for a coin is about 20 to 25 years. For many, but not all Buffalo Nickel date and mint mark combinations, the coins were reasonably struck. It seems to me that the worst offenders for poor strikes were made by the branch mints in the 1920s. By the time the Buffalo Nickel was finished in 1938 those coins would have been 18 years old or less and many might not have been that bad. At any rate putting aside very many nickels during the Great Depression might not have been that common. A lot of collectors were more concerned with "penny boards."

I think that dates started to disappear as the coins circulated from the late 1940s and into the '50s and '60s when collectors started looking for them. The problem might not have been as evident when the Buffalo Nickel was still in production.

veryfine

<< <i>The expected useful life for a coin is about 20 to 25 years. For many, but not all Buffalo Nickel date and mint mark combinations, the coins were reasonably struck. It seems to me that the worst offenders for poor strikes were made by the branch mints in the 1920s. By the time the Buffalo Nickel was finished in 1938 those coins would have been 18 years old or less and many might not have been that bad. At any rate putting aside very many nickels during the Great Depression might not have been that common. A lot of collectors were more concerned with "penny boards."

I think that dates started to disappear as the coins circulated from the late 1940s and into the '50s and '60s when collectors started looking for them. The problem might not have been as evident when the Buffalo Nickel was still in production. >>


Yes, I think this is the most plausible explanation.

keets

I think the simple answer is that with the SLQ date and Buffalo denomination there was a design element they could use to help make the recessed date/denom easy to accomplish. with the Buffalo date, they could have made a depression on the Chief's neck and then raised the date but that wouldn't have looked very good aesthetically, would it have??

my thinking is that during the "Renaissance" of American Coinage we had sculptors create designs which weren't functional in commerce. the designs are quite striking but overall some didn't wear well.

LindeDad

Yes the mint did not like collectors, they made coins for people to spend and even a dateless nickel is worth five cents at the store.

tahoe98

<< <i>i figured the jefferson nickel took care of it. >>



...so very sad that the beautiful design didn't live on, quite a bit more pleasing to the eye than the Jeff design that replaced it, imho....

valente151

Slightly OT, but kinda relevant, does anyone have any background on why coins are even dated in the first place? Just wondering.

BillJones

<< <i>Slightly OT, but kinda relevant, does anyone have any background on why coins are even dated in the first place? Just wondering. >>



Dates and mint marks allow government officials to monitor the coins in circulation. Not that it seemed to fix that much, but where poorly made or low quality coins seemed to come from one source during one period of time that gave government officials a way to track the problem right away. It also allowed those officials to keep another tab on the branch mints. If gold and silver coins started cropping up that were underweight or were made of a debased alloy, that would have left a telltale sign of trouble.

The Philadelphia Mint did chastise branch mint officials for poor quality coins. When the first batch of gold dollars were delivered from the Charlotte Mint in 1849, the Philadelphia Mint director complained about the die preparation and the quality of the strike. That forced a change and probably accounts for the very rare 1849-C gold dollar with the Open Wreath. Also when gold branch mint coins cropped up with too much silver in them, the branch mint people heard about that too.

In medieval England subpar coins with improper weights and too much base medal could have very serious consequences for the mint master who issued them. Without getting into really gory details, those who issued debased coins were sometimes left without the ability to have children. That was quite an incentive not to mess with the coinage of the realm.

Bayard1908

I'm not a collector of Buffalo nickels; but, I do dig them up using my metal detector. The later dates, such as 1936 and 1937, seem to have much thicker digits.

keets

does anyone have any background on why coins are even dated in the first place?

how else would collectors know where to put coins into in a folder??

LanceNewmanOCC

<< <i>does anyone have any background on why coins are even dated in the first place? >>



i do recall this being discussed at least a couple times. so there should be threads in the archives.
.

Hydrant

Government Issue, i.e., don't care, incompetence, never noticed the problem, etc.

bidask

<< <i>The Buffalo Nickel had the same date wear problem as the Standing Liberty Quarter, yet, unlike the quarter, the problem of wear on the date was never addressed. Why was this?

Is it possible that, because the nickel wore more slowly than the quarter, the problem was not recognized as being serious during the circulation life of the nickel prior to 1938? >>



When I was a young collector I addressed the problem of wear on the date of a buffalo nickel with Nic-a-Date.

cladking

I'd hazard the guess that not only did the date wear off a little more slowly on the
nickel than the quarter, the mint was less concerned about it as a quality control
issue. Nickels were less likely to be recoined and less expensive especially through
1938 when, as SteveBen said, it was replaced by the Jefferson.

BUFFNIXX

Would have been great if, when they recessed the date on the standing liberty quarter in 1925 , they also did the same thing to the buffalo nickel.
Also would have been great if they had continued making buffalo proofs, matte or satin finish or brilliant, all the way up to the end of the series.
OH well!.........

BillJones

<< <i>Would have been great if, when they recessed the date on the standing liberty quarter in 1925 , they also did the same thing to the buffalo nickel.
Also would have been great if they had continued making buffalo proofs, matte or satin finish or brilliant, all the way up to the end of the series.
OH well!......... >>



Copper - nickel coins are not easy to strike as evidenced by the problem one finds on Shield Nickels and a lot of the Buffalo Nickels from the 1920s. As those collect Jefferson Nickels know, sometimes strike issues go beyond the Full Steps" thing.

It might have been easier said than done when it came to recessing the date on the Buffalo Nickel design. At any rate, the date lasted for 20 to 25 years on the Buffalo Nickel, it had served its purpose. A lot of the dateless coins were in circulation longer than that.

cladking

<< <i>Would have been great if, when they recessed the date on the standing liberty quarter in 1925 , they also did the same thing to the buffalo nickel.
Also would have been great if they had continued making buffalo proofs, matte or satin finish or brilliant, all the way up to the end of the series.
OH well!........ >>



I wonder if perhaps they did do something.

Starting in 1924 there seemed to be a slight improvement with the ability of the coin
to retain enough information to discern the date longer. There was a further tiny im-
provent in '25 and then a large one in '26.

It is possible this is caused by other factors such as a decrease in the velocity of nic-
kels or circulation patterns. Even large numbers of nickels with significant numbers of
brand new post-1925's sitting in storage during the depresssion might account for it.
Even the shapes of the digits could play a role.

But the percentage of buffalos with their date indiscernable decreases in steps until the
percentage of 1926 is much lower. In other words about 80% of the 1923 issue had
lost their date by the late-'50-s but only about 60% of the 1926. Earlier issues were
mostly dateless and later issues were mostly better.