Collectors Corner^SM: The Collectibles Marketplace

The 1921-S Buffalo Nickel is a coin with semi-key scarceness. Click image to enlarge.

The Buffalo Nickel series is popular as a date-and-mintmark challenge for PCGS Set Registry members and other collectors who pursue this beloved early 20th-century type. And the Buffalo Nickel series offers a true degree of challenge, boasting myriad scarcities, including several bona fide key dates and semi-key dates. The 1921-S Buffalo Nickel certainly qualifies among the latter, with its mintage of only 1,557,000 pieces and much slimmer number of survivors today – only 8,500 across all grades, according to PCGS estimates.

The 1921-S Buffalo Nickel was born of the same mintage-ameliorating circumstances that caused other 1921 United States coins to see anemic outputs in the early 1920s; a post-World War I recession reduced the need for new circulating coinage, leading to a short hiatus for some coins. Among the U.S. coins whose production runs saw pauses during the time were the Buffalo Nickel, Mercury Dime, Standing Liberty Quarter, and Walking Liberty Half Dollar – all were put on the back burner in 1922, not struck at all that year. Meanwhile, they and other coin series experienced significant reductions in mintage in 1921, with the Buffalo Nickel included.

The 1921-S Buffalo Nickel was one of just two issues for the series that year, with the Philadelphia Mint producing a little more than 10.6 million strikes. As the American numismatic scene went in the early 1920s, the relatively few collectors who were actively pursuing contemporary U.S. coins for their collections were primarily concerned with saving Philadelphia coinage from the “Mother Mint.” Branch-mint U.S. issues of the 1910s and 1920s were of little interest to most collectors of the Roaring ‘20s, thus few coins like the 1921-S Buffalo Nickel were ever saved in uncirculated grades.

The kicker with the 1921-S Buffalo Nickel is that it’s not just uncirculated specimens that are difficult for collectors to locate. Even circulated examples are tough, with G4 examples retailing for around $75. The 1921-S Buffalo Nickel costs $160 in F12 and a whopping $1,000 in XF40. For those who absolutely insist on Mint State examples, the 1921-S Buffalo Nickel fetches $4,000 in MS63 and nearly $12,000 in MS65. The record price for the coin was set at auction in 2006, when a buyer ponied up $51,750 for an MS66 example.