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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Troodon, post: 26053527, member: 4626&quot;]A little realization I had when the collection that was just given to me had a 1938 buffalo nickel in it.&nbsp; I originally incorrectly labeled this as just 1938, but then looked at it more closely and realized it was 1938-D.&nbsp; I then looked it up in Redbook and realized all 1938 buffalo nickels were minted in Denver.&nbsp; Then I realized something when I noted that 1938-D Jefferson nickels were a key date, and lower mintages than both 1938 and 1938-S.&nbsp; The reason they minted the least Jefferson nickels in 1938, was because they were the only mint still minting buffalo nickels in that year before they made the transition to the new design.</p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;m definitely not the first person to figure this out, but it&#039;s satisfying to figure out a reason things are the way they are instead of just assuming it&#039;s kind of random or there is no real explanation for it.&nbsp; There&#039;s probably reasons each mint minted a certain number in a given year, but after a while it kind of feels like random statistics, without a clear reason why a given year and mintmark is more common or rare than others.&nbsp; But for this one at least it&#039;s clear that Denver for whatever reason delayed switchover to the new nickel design; maybe they got the dies late, I don&#039;t know, there&#039;s probably some reason.&nbsp; (Love to hear it if anybody knows specifically why.)</p><p><br /></p><p>But there you go, people who didn&#039;t already know this or hadn&#039;t figured it out.</p><p><br /></p><p>P.S. Kind of an incomplete explanation, but at least there was one... Looked it up and apparently there were delays in production in getting the new Jefferson nickel out, due to them refining and adjusting the design.&nbsp; But nickels were still needed, so more buffalo nickels were produced.&nbsp; Why only Denver, and why Philadelphia and San Francisco didn&#039;t mint any to meet the demand, don&#039;t know.&nbsp; But I can kind of make a semi-educated guess...&nbsp; Philadelphia kind of makes sense, since that&#039;s probably where they were testing the new design out before they released anything.&nbsp; San Francisco often lagged behind the other mints anyway, were probably told not to mint any nickels until they got the new design (or just decided this on their own.&nbsp; San Francisco always seemed to be the last to do anything, and their mintages were almost always less than the other two main mints).&nbsp; Leaving Denver to have to step in.</p><p><br /></p><p>Resulted in 1938-D buffaloes being the last of the buffalo nickels but also 1938-D Jeffersons being a key date.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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