Small Home Gazette, Summer 2024

History Brief: A Very Special Coin

The Buffalo or Indian Head Nickel is a coin designed in 1912 as part of President Theodore Roosevelt’s campaign to beautify American coinage. It featured an image of a bison on one side and a portrait of a Native American on the other and was produced from 1913 to 1938. (Bison, not buffalo, are the iconic animals of the American West and were misnamed by early explorers. The name stuck.)

Minnesota-born sculptor James Earle Fraser, known for his “End of the Trail” Indian sculpture, created a design for the coin, intending to capture the beauty of the American West. A bison in New York’s Central Park Zoo could have been his model, but given his early frontier life, Fraser would have been familiar with the species. He did, however, use a combination of three living Indian chiefs to create his Indian head design.

In 1937, a Denver Mint employee over polished the reverse (bison) die with an emery board in an effort to remove scratches. The result?—the front leg of the bison was missing! Thousands of three-legged nickels were minted and put into circulation before the mistake was caught.

The 1937-D nickel became the most famous and highly sought-after in the Buffalo nickel series.