1934-D Buffalo Nickel Gets Better and Better

In some ways you could probably make the case that the entire Buffalo nickel collection is a sleeper. In fact, where nickels are concerned, there just has not been very much activity in recent memory.

A chart of many nickel prices of the last 30 years, whether they are Shield, Liberty Head, Buffalo or Jefferson, would probably show more weakness than just about any other coins of the United States.

Buffalo nickels might just be a little less newsworthy than the others, although they may actually do better in their own quiet way. There are no $1 million Buffalo nickels. In fact, for many years Buffalo nickels probably suffered a bit because there were no real key dates. There is the 1916 doubled die, the 1918/17-D overdate and the widely heralded, at least for a time, 1937-D three-legged Buffalo. The problem with all such coins is that while interesting they were never required for a collection by those of us following the iron law of Whitman albums. That is a big matter. It has a real impact on demand.

You can do all the promoting you want, but Buffalo nickels have historically not had a date identified as a key. There are some better Buffalo nickels. The line type 1913-S and 1913-D, the 1915-S and 1921-S all come to mind as real good regular dates.

The Buffalo nickel always was a bit confusing. The only date with a mintage under 1 million pieces was the 1926- S and it was barely under that mark. It was never considered the key date to the series.

Part of the problem when it comes to evaluating Buffalo nickels is that what matters is the survival rate and not the mintage. A coin could be heavily produced, but if the entire mintage was destroyed except for a few, the coin is a significant rarity.

Buffalo nickels have the dubious distinction of having probably the most easily worn off date of all coins of the United States. That simply wreaks havoc with survival rates. It was possible to restore dates, but with what was basically etching acid. That was fun for kids, but leaves the nickels damaged.

Add to the weakness of date some Buffalo nickels that were not well struck and some interesting things can happen. Add to that the fact that Buffalo nickels in many cases were released during tough economic times and at times when there were much more promising dates of other denominations in circulation to use up the small amounts of money collectors had to spend, and you have a very good recipe for some surprisingly tough coins, especially in upper grades.

The 1934-D is one of a number of good examples. Its mintage of 7,480,000 was not the lowest, but neither is it a high mintage. There are not a lot of nickels floating around with such mintages today. And it was 1934, a difficult economic period.

For coin collectors there were the last couple years of Peace dollars emerging, plus many commemoratives and some pretty interesting new dates like 1931-S Lincoln cents, or even the much lower mintage 1931-S Buffalo vying for collector funds. If you had money to spend on coins, the 1934-D would not have been high on your list.

Today the 1934-D shows that neglect. It brings small premiums in circulated grades, jumps to more than double a common date in MS-60 and continues to go up in grades above MS-60, hitting $465 in MS-65. Clearly it is a good coin that has been getting better.