[The following excerpt is published courtesy of DLRC Press and its author, David W. Lange. This information was originally published in 2006 in The Complete Guide to Buffalo Nickels.]

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MINTAGE: 37,981,000 (Ranking 56/64)

POPULAR VARIETIES: A doubled-die obverse is reported by Leroy and Marilyn Van Allen.

RARITY: This issue is common in all grades, though slightly less so than 1926(P). Original rolls may still exist, but these are quickly broken up when they enter the market from old collections.

COMMENTS:

Well struck coins are the norm for this issue, though no Buffalo Nickel coined 1918 or later will have the sharpness of well struck coins from earlier years. The master hubs for this type gradually became worn, a process accelerated by the high mintages of 1916-20.

1927(P) nickels typically have very good to excellent luster. Satiny pieces are occasionally seen, but the vast majority display the frosty brilliance that characterizes most issues from the 1920s and ‘30s.

Five coins described as specimen strikes or satin finish proofs have surfaced since 1989. See Chapter 7 for more information.

In his book, Making Money, Edward Rochette revealed how the mintage of 1927 nickels was supplemented through the private and quite illegal operation run by three individuals in Monroe, New York. In March of 1935, state troopers searching in the woods for a still stumbled upon an abandoned farmhouse. Found within its cellar was a “machine shop, stamping press, boxes of blank planchets, 3,400 finished 1927 Buffalo nickels and a sizeable quantity of raw metal.”

The troopers uncovered an illegal mint that had been flooding a five-state region with fake nickels for a year or more. Allegedly, some five million five-cent pieces of this date were counterfeited by brothers Louis and George Ehlers and their partner, Leo Gailie. The trio had assembled a network of fences who purchased the coins at a rate of fifty cents on the dollar, netting the manufacturers a profit of just two cents per coin.