The 1913-S Buffalo Nickel (Type 2) was struck at the San Francisco Mint with a recorded mintage of 1,209,000 coins — the 3rd-lowest of the 64 circulation-strike issues in the buffalo nickel series, and 2% of the 73,656,186 buffalo nickels the Mint produced across all facilities in 1913.
The published record is not unanimous on this figure: most references record 1,209,000, while at least one published table gives 1,290,000 - a transposition somewhere in the literature that the file records without repeating. The file leads with the figure most references agree on and records the dissent rather than deciding it.
The scarcest issue of the first year - a five-figure survivor count in high grade and a published record that cannot quite agree on its own digits.
A full collector's note for this issue — survival, strike character, and what to check before buying — is on the writing schedule; the figures above are the permanent record.
| Issue | Mint | Mintage |
|---|---|---|
| 1913 Buffalo Nickel (Type 1) | Philadelphia | 30,992,000 |
| 1913 Buffalo Nickel (Type 2) | Philadelphia | 29,857,186 |
| 1913-S Buffalo Nickel (Type 1) | San Francisco | 2,105,000 |
| 1913-S Buffalo Nickel (Type 2) | San Francisco | 1,209,000 |
| 1913-D Buffalo Nickel (Type 1) | Denver | 5,337,000 |
| 1913-D Buffalo Nickel (Type 2) | Denver | 4,156,000 |
Mintage figures: United States Mint (Annual Report of the Director of the Mint), Royal Canadian Mint records, and — for the 1935 banknote issue — Bank of Canada printage records as published in the Charlton Standard Catalogue of Canadian Government Paper Money, cross-checked across independent published references. Specifications: United States Mint coin specifications.