Winner Announced! Buffalo Nickels - Guess The Dates

DL20K - Here's how it will work: It will be like golf, with the lowest score winning. If player A guessed the P coin right, missed the D coin by two years and missed the S coin by 5 years, his final score is 7. (0 plus 2 plus 5) The best score anyone can get will be ZERO, and if nobody gets ZERO then the next lowest wins. Sound fair? Here is a photo of the front page from my local newspaper, the Sunday, February 22 edition. The three coins are arranged around the date so that you can see that they have not been tampered with prior to the end of the contest. Hopefully I'll have them restored in another 5 or 6 hours and can announce the winner then.

Weerdsteev, I agree that's a very good method of determining the winner in such case

We have a winner!
Congratulations Nod2003! Nod came the closest when he guessed 1916-P, 1916-D and 1920-S. He missed the P date by 4 years, he nailed the D perfectly and he missed the S date by only 1 year - for a year differential score of 5! We had two folks tied for second at 9. As both Mycrob and I suspected, the actual dates were 1920-P, 1916-D and 1921-S.

Here's the 1920-P. It was recognizable as a 1920 by the extra "wavy" ribbon nearest the date. Only the 1920 PDS and the 1921 PS nickels have this extra wavy ribbon. The date on this coin restored so poorly that I did not bother to restore any of the other features on the coin. It was probably a weak strike to begin with. Weak strikes make lousy restorations! This coin now officially qualifies as a CULL! Yechhh!



Here's the 1916-D. Most 1916-D's will restore pretty nicely and this one was no exception. It was recognizable as a 1916-D by the "D" mint mark being embedded into the C in Cents. Sometimes well worn 1914-Ds will appear to have this feature, but after restoration the D from the 1914 will have separation from the C in cents.




Here is the 1921-S. The obverse of a 1921-S almost always comes back nicely. The reverses are a crap shoot. In this case, the reverse crapped out! Too bad, because the front was really quite nice. This coin was recognizable as a 1921-S by the ultra deep grooves in the Indian's hair braid where it enters the knot. No other date in the Buffalo series has hair grooves anywhere near as deep as the 1921 - and this feature applies to the 21-P as well as the 21-S.




ShaftA9a and DNA tied for 2nd place with a year differential score of 9. ShaftAa made his "9" first however, so I am going to offer him a consolation prize of the 3 nickels (Our winner, Nod2003, chose the 1954-S quarter.)

If you're interested in seeing some restorations that REALLY came out pretty nicely, take a look over here:
http://buffaloreincarnations.com/photos.php

Thanks to all who played!

Steve

Hey Steve, that's some very good information about identifying some years of dateless nickels by characteristics. It looks like at least one of my dateless Buffs is a 1921-P, so I'll put it in vinegar.

Thanks again for the neat contest, and yes that was a very good way to 'score' it!

Thanks so much for the contest. I have a roll soaking now for about 3 weeks, only about 4 came up with easily nice identify-able dates, some are working on it and a bunch will not give up the ghost. I know one is a 1916 and the other a 1918 and I have been letting them soak longer hoping to find the over date and double date but uhhhhh I dunno, that would be a lucky snag wouldn't it out of just 1 roll.
Is this normal?
When should I figure the bath is done in vinegar and settle for results?

I'll post you my pictures steev, I have edited here in this post and added them. I think they might be about done baking by now.

Thanks for the contest, will send you an email.