Collecting Coins On The Cheap: The Buffalo Nickel Challenge

yer 13dii looks like an s from here.

Wow, now that I look at it again, it really does look like an S in the picture, moreso than it does in hand... I will swap it out tonight with the other one. The good news is that I have a 1913-S type 2 up for trade now!

Day 3: 1915!

1915:


1915-D:


I have several of these, most of them are nicer than this one, so I can probably upgrade it to one with an full mint-mark if I don't end up trading the surplus away.

1915-S:

I thought 1919-P or 1920-P were the most common dates among dateless Philly Buffalo nickels?

They are, but fewer of them have completely lost their dates. I had almost no dateless 1920, for instance, they almost all had enough of the date to pick them out (even if it weren't for that year-specific design detail). I had quite a few partial date 1919 also, but fewer dateless than 1916.

At least, that's the way it seemed for the nickels I had.

A couple more trades/sales have gone through, so here's an update on the budget situation.

Set 100% complete!

Sourced coins:
Coin roll hunting (14 coins @ $0.70; 5¢ ea.)
Type 1 included with Nic-A-Date (1 coin @ FREE)
Lot 1 (107 no and partial date; from ebay @ $18.95 incl. shipping; 17.7¢ ea.)
Lot 2 (500+ no and partial date ugly; from ebay @ $57.75 incl. shipping; 11.6¢ ea.)
6 hole fillers in trade for 8 War Nickels (6 coins @ $0.40)
1924-S in trade for several surplus
Remaining hole fillers in trade for some surplus acid-dated key dates.

Surplus: (prices are less shipping)
1 lot mixed dates sold for $6.24
Lot traded for 2 80% silver Canadian quarters (I'll count it as $10 after postage considering vagaries in selling and trading junk silver)
Lot sold for $5.06
4 rolls of dateless sold for $24.80
Lot sold for $21.12
Lot sold for $6.68
(other sales/trades pending)
See this thread for what I have left...

Supplies (not counted toward total):
Dansco 7112 Album ($21.95)
946 ML White Vinegar, 5% acidity ($1.19)
Nic-A-Date ($7.49 incl. shipping)
PCB Etchant from Radio Shack ($11.60 incl. tax)
Stack-On 39 Drawer Storage Cabinet ($19.96 - for sorting these and other coins)
Bubble Mailers 25 ct. ($7.99 - most not used for this project)
Mylar 2x2 Holders 100 ct. ($6.49 - most not used for this project)

Total invested (coins only): $77.80
Surplus sold: $73.90
Net investment: $3.90
$18.05 under budget

I also have about $14 face in leftover nickels still. I am currently enough under budget to cover most of my supplies.

I think Buffalo nickels are kinda a unique opportunity because there are no huge rarities (a whole set in G-4 can be probably be assembled at retail for the price of a '16-D in G-4), and the huge number of dateless nickels out there.

Maybe some series of silver coins like walkers or Peace dollars could be assembled at melt from cherry-picking junk silver lots because you only have to get really lucky on a 1-2 dates, but for Mercury dimes you'd have to get really lucky at least three times. Someone here had all but the 16-D assembled for like $67, which is downright miraculous.

It wasn't as hard as I thought. I got all the early keys plus duplicates from the first couple batches of dateless, and the '21-S which is a very hard date, and that gave me plenty to trade for the rest, mostly over the forum. I didn't have to do a bunch of haggling at coin shows, or digging through junk bins or anything. If you look at the time of my first post, it wasn't even that long ago.