Buffalo Nickel

The Buffalo Nickel is among the most iconic and distinctly American coin designs, evoking the imagery of the western frontier through its Native American portrait and bison reverse. It is a favorite among collectors for both its artistic merit and its accessibility to variety and error hunters.

The series is also notable for the fragility of its date placement, which caused many circulated examples to wear smooth, making well-dated, higher-grade specimens especially desirable.

Sculptor James Earle Fraser designed the coin in 1913 to replace the Liberty Head ("V") nickel, aiming for imagery that was authentically American rather than based on classical or European motifs. The obverse portrait is generally understood to be a composite of at least two or three Native American men, while the bison on the reverse was reportedly modeled after a bison named Black Diamond at the New York Zoological Park (though this attribution has been debated over the years).

The design was minted from 1913 through 1938, with an early design change partway through 1913 (from a bison standing on a mound to a bison on a flat plain line) to reduce wear on the denomination lettering. It was succeeded in 1938 by the Jefferson Nickel, which has remained the basic design (with some later reverse updates) ever since.

The obverse shows a right-facing portrait of a Native American man in profile, with "LIBERTY" to the right and the date below. The reverse depicts an American bison standing on a mound of earth (Type I, early 1913) or a flat line/plain (Type II, later 1913 onward), with "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" above, "FIVE CENTS" below, and "E PLURIBUS UNUM" along the upper right.

The coin measures 21.2 mm in diameter and weighs 5 grams in a copper-nickel alloy, with a plain edge. The mint mark (D or S) appears beneath "FIVE CENTS" on the reverse; Philadelphia coins have no mint mark. Because the date was raised on a high point of the design, it wore away easily on circulated coins, so many well-worn Buffalo Nickels have no visible date at all.

Common-date Buffalo Nickels in worn condition are inexpensive and widely available, making the series popular for beginning collectors and type sets. The most famous rarity is the 1937-D "Three-Legged" variety, caused by a Mint worker over-polishing a die and removing part of the bison's front leg, which commands strong premiums even in worn grades.

Other notable issues include the scarce 1913-S Type II and 1921-S, both low-mintage dates that command significant premiums in higher grades. Because sharply struck, fully dated examples are much scarcer than raw survival numbers suggest, condition and strike quality play an outsized role in this series' values.