Half A Million Anyone?

I rather like the look of the 1916 DDO personally, but both coins are equally amazing.

This is just more of Steve Contursi yelling, "Look at me!" I love it when he does this.

Only that one in the NGC holder is known in 66...highest grade and only 1 pop....i want one heh.

Not sure on that one but I have a resource that shows pops in both and cac also...

I find it absurd that a coin which was produced with an over date because a lazy mint employee repunched a prevous year's die rather than replace it can have any significant premium over a coin struck from a properly made die. People call these errors when in fact they were deliberately repunched, matbe because the new years' dies were not yet made or the Mint was trying to save time and money.

Ed
ANA LM-3175

Well, Gyrene/Ed, I don't understand why someone would spend hundreds or thousands on an old corroded illegible mostly-rubbed-away Colonial coin, either, but they do, and enjoy it. Likewise I am sure there are people here who don't understand why I am cheerfully assembling a collection of "rescued Natives" (rehabilitated IHC that may have been cleaned or restored in a manner a TPG would call cleaning), but I am, and I enjoy it. I don't understand people who VAM-hunt, either, but they do and they enjoy it, and I've seen a few people here puzzled over jbuck's love of "that big ugly platter" of an Eisenhower dollar, but he loves them, and enjoys it.

It's not about whether you "get it." It's about finding what you love, and enjoying it. For some people, that means finding coins that look like they're out of the norm, whether it's overdates or die cracks or greasers (in God we rust!) or counterstamps or off-center planchets or what-have-you. For others, it means mint state. This coin combines two of those worlds, and if you enjoy atypical coins and also bright shiny things, it's a treat.

From the seller's description information (a variety, not an error):

"Along with the 1916/16 Doubled Die Obverse and the 1937-D 3-Legged, the 1918/7-D is the most popular variety in the 1913-1938 Buffalo nickel series. The '18/7-D is much rarer than the '37-D 3-Legged, and it is only marginally less so than the '16-P DDO. This overdate was created because the booming United States economy of the World War I years resulted in an insatiable demand for circulating coinage. Sometime at the end of 1917, when the Engraving Department in the Philadelphia Mint was preparing dies for both 1917-dated and 1918-dated coinage, a Mint employee took a Buffalo nickel obverse die that had already received an impression from a 1917-dated hub and gave it a second impression from a 1918-dated hub. Whether this was done intentionally or by mistake is not known, but we do know that this die was shipped west for use in the Denver Mint as part of the facility's 1918-D Buffalo nickel delivery. That certain 1918-D Nickels actually show traces of a 7 underneath the final diugit in the date was discovered by numismatists as long ago as 1931. This fact notwithstanding, few genuine 1918/7-D Nickels have been authenticated over the years, and the overdate remains rare in an absolute sense and excessively so in Mint State.

The Type II Buffalo nickel series ran from 1913 through 1938, and it is one of the most widely collected series in all of U.S. numismatics. This type was created when the Mint discovered that the Type I Buffalo nickel did not hold up well in circulation. In particular, the placement of the reverse denomination FIVE CENTS on a raised mound was most unfortunate because this critical feature rapidly wore away with use. In the new Type II design, the Mint placed the denomination in exergue below the straight line upon which the bison was now made to stand. Additionally, Mint Engraver Charles E. Barber (who carried out the modifications to James Earle Fraser's original work) also smoothed out the fields and slightly modified the Native American's portrait on the obverse and the reverse bison which had the result of erasing much of the charming rusticity of the Type I design. While Barber might have envisioned that his changes would improve the durability of the design, this did not happen. Even more significantly for today's numismatic buyers, the new design did not strike up as well as its Type I counterpart, and there are many issues in the Type II series that are extremely difficulty to locate even with bold definition. Quality-conscious collectors and investors are encouraged to focus on examples in the higher Mint State grades, at which levels the leading third-party certification services are keen to take strike into account when forming their assessment of the individual coin."