| History of Collecting Buffalo Nickels |
| In the beginning....
During its debut release in 1913 almost everyone saved one or two shinny new Buffalo Nickels, especially the Type-1 reverse with the Bison on the mound. The thinking was this Type would become valuable because “they weren't making any more”.
Collectors now find the 1913 P, D and S mint Type-2 tougher to find in mint state, and it confirms the proven recommendation to “zig when everyone else zags”.
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After its first year of production in 1913 the fanfare for the Buffalo Nickel waned. There wasn’t any larger public following for collecting this series by date and mint, let alone any micro checking for rare die varieties. It would be many years before any of these rare die varieties would be discovered or even desired by collectors.
Up until the late 1920’s there wasn’t even a market for these coins. Collectors with an early passion for collecting Buffalo Nickels simply went to the bank and bought that year’s coinage for face value, or they just pick them out of pocket change. Some collectors with a little more purpose would annually write to the different Mints and buy them for face value plus return postage. The thought of putting away a few uncirculated rolls occurred only to a very few foresighted collectors, and most of them probably paid little attention to the strike and quality of the coins.
By the early 1930’s a couple thing happened to get the public interested in collecting Buffalo Nickels, and coins in general. First, in 1931 (the start of the Great Depression) only one Mint produced any Buffalo Nickels – the San Francisco Mint, and only 1.2-million 1931-S Buffaloes were minted. That figure was known at the time because the ANA’s official publication The Numismatist began to publish annual coinage figures. Before that low mintage Buffalo Nickels, such as the 1926-S, 1913-S Type-2, 1924-S, 1915-S and 1921-S, had been normally released into circulation without any public knowledge of their low mintage - making uncirculated pieces today very rare. Because of the depression economy of the early 1930’s, no Buffalo Nickels were minted in 1932 or 1933, adding to the speculative market of 1931-S Buffaloes along with other business strike coins of the time. It was the beginning of whole-sale hoarding of coin rolls.
The late 1920’s and early 1930’s also saw a surge in production of paper products for inexpensive pastimes and hobbies such as jigsaw puzzles, board games, and children books etc. It was a sign of the times when inexpensive pursuits were sought. People were sometimes seen with flat-level boards suspended by straps around their neck and waist. This allowed their hands free to work on jigsaw puzzles as they walked along – an amazing time.
At this same time the “coin board” became popular for collecting coins. Mass prodution of very inexpensive boards started started in 1934. They were simply paper-backed sheets of 11” x 14” cardboard with cut holes to fit the coin denomination and printed with date designations. Eventually, Whitman Publishing became the leading manufacture of these coin boards and by the early 1940’s the product had evolved into three-panel folders that are still manufactured and sold today.
In the 1940's and 1950's the popular hobbies were HAM-radio, model-trains, stamp collecting, and coin collecting. Coin collecting was appealing because the collector could fill most of the holes in the coin boards by searching through pocket change or bank rolls. Because of that, the most popular coins to collect were the Lincoln Cent, the Buffalo Nickel, and the Mercury Dime.
Up until 1960 or a little thereafter it was still possible to pull Buffalo Nickels from circulation. After that if you wanted to put together a set of Buffaloes you had to search through bags sold at a premium, or buy individual coins from dealers. Known die varieties at that time were limited to the 1918/7-D Doubled Die Overdate and the 1937-D 3-Legged Buffalo, and they were very resonable to purchase.
The 1970's saw Buffalo Nickel prices and popularity stagnate, as coin collecting in general fell out of favor for other more appealing pursuits. However, die varieties for the series now expanded to include the 1916/1916 Doubled Die and the 1938-D coins with repunched mintmarks; D/D, D/D/D and D/S etc. At the time no one knew just how rare the 1916/1916 DDO was - if you could find a mint state example at a coin show, you could purchased it for $600 to $800!
Grading of mint state Buffaloes sometimes became a point of contention between collectors and dealers. The term BU was used to mean "Brilliant Uncirculated" and applied liberally to all shiny Buffalo Nickels. Sometimes the word "Gem" would be added to indicated a particularly nice coin. Occasional problems arose when selling-back those purported "Gem-Brilliant Uncirculated" Buffalo Nickels. Many times the collector was told the coin was not "up to sniff", and pointed out to be a "slider" (meaning microscopic signs of wear), or having chemically or physically altered surfaces. Sometimes just plain old over-grading of circulated coins added to the frustration of collectors. All this but would be addressed in the next decade.
Third party grading is defined as grading, authentication, and encapsulation of a coin by an independent company. Often abbreviated TPG, these companies for a fee will grade and encapsulate ("slab") a coin. The first TPG company was founded in 1972 by the American Numismatic Association and called ANACS. At that time the coins were not graded or encapsulated, only confirmed as genuine and returned with a photo certificate.
In 1986 Professional Coin Grading Service (PCGS) started and pioneered coin encapsulation with a plastic holder. Their first slabs are now referred to as "Old Green Holders" or "Rattlers", because of their color and the way coins would sometimes rattle inside. The Numismatic Guaranty Corporation (NGC) followed PCGS in 1987, and today these are the Big Three in third party grading – PCGS, NGC and ANACS. Two other companies ICG and SEGS are regarded as second tier companies. Below this there are many lesser companies that often do not offer a guarantee and are often regarded as substandard.
Because of the perception that PCGS has stricter grading standards, coins graded by PCGS command higher prices over NGC and ANACS. This perception and added value also spills over into PCGS's related branch PSA for grading baseball cards. For this reason, serious Buffalo Nickel collectors should have all their high-grade coins certified by PCGS for investment purposes.
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