3509

1937-D Buffalo Nickel. 3 legs PCGS XF45

Currency:USD Category:Coins & Paper Money Start Price:400.00 USD Estimated At:800.00 - 900.00 USD
1937-D Buffalo Nickel. 3 legs PCGS XF45
Sharp details and the missing leg clearly visible (er, invisible) -- with just the hoof remaining. Poor baby!

It appears that even the artist who designed this piece, James Earle Fraser, preferred the familiar term "buffalo" to the more zoologically correct "bison." Semantics aside, the model for the nickel's reverse is known to have been a bull named Black Diamond. This animal was then a resident of New York City's Central Park Zoo and was already about seventeen years old at the time (1913). Fraser's own correspondence reveals his exasperation in attempting to keep this beast posed in profile as depicted on the coin. Evidently quite uncooperative, it insisted on confronting the artist head on and would return to this stance immediately after being corrected. (#3982)