I personally would rather take an old Buffalo nickel out and use a cutting tourch on it, rather than one of those acids. The way the nickel looks after the use of the acid, is so bad that no one with any respect for coins would have them in their collection. Or at least that is the way I see it! Nic-a-Date:hammer:
CoinNewb3, Yes, in most cases Nic-a-Date will restore a Mintmark as well as other missing design elements! I have seen some folks on eBay selling the rare Key Date and rare Error Buffalo Nickels on eBay that had the entire Obverse and/or Reverse retored using Nic-a-Date. However, I would never purchase one of these as Nic-a-Date and other Acid type methods of restoring Dates, Mintmarks or other design elements, have a tendency to eat away at the coin and eventually wipe out what was restored!
does anyone here have a picture of a buffalo that had nic o date on it? i've heard that these are horrible looking but have never seen a buffalo or any other coin with the nic o date designs on them.
It is not possible to restore what was lost. IT is possible to make new etches based on chemical differentiation Ruben
Ok, so I admit I am trying the Nic-a-date process. I wanted to start a set of buffalo nickels but really do not have much money at all. I have a few in ok condition but I can't afford the rare dates and just wanted a coin in any condition. First of all I have to agree that the Nic-a-Date does make it look pretty horrible. Just pretty glaring. I even tried doing a whole coin so it was even and the coin just looks odd all around. Saying all this I still think that I agree with my decision to try it out. I have found some semi-key dates including 3 1914's. All I had before was a dateless buffalo without a place to do except in a no date pile. Now I can start my collection ( although not a very pretty one)
I would go for it then and work on your collection by restoring dates. It will be fun to take unidentifyable nickels and see what they turn out to be. My only advice is not to spend too much money on ebay on coins that already have restored dates. By the way........I am thinking that it would be a cool idea to try to complete a full set of Buffalo Nickels using only unreadable date coins and restoring them......sounds like a cheap and fun project.
yeah... that is what I am trying to do. I bought a lot of 100 dateless nickels off ebay and am in the process of finding out the dates. Strange thing is that so far I have done about 15 and 12 of them have been from the teens decade. Not complaining though as those are the more rare ones.
sounds like a good idea to me! buy a bunch of dateless buffaloes, put nic a date on them and make a set out of them. where can you buy this stuff? i might just have to buy some for my old nickels. i'm curious about what date these are. its not as bad looking as i thought it was!
I am always sadden to here talk of putting acid on coinage, kind of takes away just what this hobby is all about at least thats the way it seems to me. Bruce.
i'm wondering since the S mintmarks can be worth lots of money, should i buy some nic a date on this and see the year? if it were a key date, would it be ruined?
i know this is a dd: question, but do you think vingar would nic a date? i mean since vinegar is a acid, i wonder if it would work. would it be potent enough?
I personally have never used acid on buffalo nickels. But I think it makes an interesting way for a collector to potentially obtain coins for a set that they otherwise may never be able to afford. They may not be worth much value wise, but may be acceptable for a collector. However, I won't be using it myself unless I think I have a roll of 18/17 overdates.....lol.
