SLABBING ACID-TREATED DATELESS BUFFALO NICKELS

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V19 2016 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 19, Number 44, October 30, 2016, Article 21

This Numismatic News article posted October 28, 2016 shows another aspect of slabbing I was totally unaware of. -Editor

If you are of a certain age, you can recall encountering many of them in change.

Though they did nothing to help fill a Whitman album in the circulation finds era, they often sparked daydreams as collectors wondered what dates might have been on them.

If this describes your early days as a coin collector, a “Numismatic News” reader who does not want to be identified has suggested that the many dateless Buffalo coins that are still around can take coin collectors down memory lane.

As he wrote in an e-mail, “I have found a way to enjoy coin collecting today with much of the fun as I had in looking for coins for my albums when I was a youngster back in the 1950s.”

As you might have guessed, he then extolled the virtues of using date restoring acid on them. “I have been acquiring quantities of dateless Buffalo nickels over time and have been successful in almost completing a set of 1913-1938 Buffalo nickels. What has caught my attention is that these unwanted 100-year-old coins are worthless among most coin dealers and many collectors,” he wrote.

While acid treatment has been around almost as long as the dateless coins themselves, the reader points out something that is less well known.

“Many do not understand that PCGS, NGC and ANACS will encapsulate these coins and attribute varieties.”

“Through my many searches, I have been able to secure an acid treated 1916 DDO (doubled-die obverse) nickel and a 1918/7-D overdate example. I believe that there may be a bright future for these discovered coins at very reasonable prices.”

I'm "of a certain age" myself - though not old enough to have pulled a Buffalo from change, I'll confess to having acid-treated many a dateless Buffalo in my schoolboy days in search of a prize for my collection. I didn't know they still sold that stuff. I'm not proud of it. Dripping acid on coins now feels like drowning a bag of puppies. But carving a poor defenseless coin into a Hobo Nickel is an equally violent act. I guess both are reasonable ways to deal with the surplus of otherwise non-collectible coins. What do readers think? -Editor

To read the complete article, see:
Acid date collectible? (www.numismaticnews.net/article/acid-date-collectible)