Sorting Buffalo Nickels

That's a lot of buffalos! Hope you find some great specimens in there. let the treasure hunt continue!

I think the final tally may be higher. I'm working on a not-quite-full quart ziplock bag right now and it was only about half empty when the count reached 600. I think there are three more quart bags and one of them is completely full, so there may be ~4000-5000 buffaloes.

I can't seem to stick with one coin type for too long because I'm always itching to look at something else. I think I'll take a buffalo break and use my new Snow attribution guides to take a closer look at some of the nicer Indian cents now that I have a USB scope.

I'm roughly halfway through the first-pass sorting of buffaloes. The tally is 2079. No exceptional finds yet.

For the last 1000 or so I stopped scrutinizing the dateless coins for secondary traits except to put aside the wavy ribbon coins, which I'll further examine later. I will go back through those dateless nickels very carefully at some point. I haven't given up hope of finding a 1916 DDO

As I went I looked for the big varieties in readable-date coins ('37D 3 leg, '36D 3.5 leg, '35 DDR) but found none.

Of the 2079 buffs sorted so far:
- 23 dateless type 1 Phillys
- 6 dateless type 1 Denvers
- 3 dateless type 1 Sacs
- 1 readable 1913 type 2, but I suspect old whole-coin acid treatment
- only 39 pre-1920 coins with readable dates
- 337 readables from 1920-1929, the only date/mm not found in that range was 1921-S
- total number with readable dates 1272

I'm pretty sure I can ID dateless 1925 nickels by their ribbons (in addition to 1920, 1921, and 1924).

I really should do laundry and dishes now but looking at coins is much more enjoyable...

I am wondering where you got all of these buffaloes from.

Oh, okay. That would be a mission to go through all of them.

it's hard to imagine the total volume of buffalo you are working thru..maybe a pic of everything when you're done? good luck on your search

Great thread!! You can find dateless 16 DDO in dateless Buffalo nickel lots. I have found 2 in a 10,000 or so dateless lot and the link was provided earlier in this thread. Very hard on the eyes scrutinizing all those coins, but persevearance pays off. My two ultimately got certified by ANACS.

I don't know about the 23 and 25 being a little different- never noticed it. The 20 and 21 and 24 can be distinguished by looking at the hair ribbons but I don't think there are other diagnositcs for 13 T2 to 1919, and 1925-29. Usually the 30s are not dateless but partial dates or full dates.

I would jump at the chance to go through that lot! I 'll bet there will be some nice finds...