In 1937 a Denver press operator polished a clashed die a little too enthusiastically and erased the bison's front leg. The coins struck from that die - the Three-Legged Buffalo - became the most famous die state in American numismatics. The file's doctrine matters here: the three-legger is not a mintage row. The recorded mintage on this page, 17,826,000, is the 1937-D issue entire; nobody recorded how many left the damaged die, so the variety trades on certified population, not on a count.
That fame comes with the series' most active counterfeit: grinding the leg off an ordinary 1937-D. A genuine three-legger has more going on than a missing limb - a distinctive stream of raised dots under the bison and a moth-eaten foreleg stump where the polishing stopped - which is why the variety should only ever change hands in a holder that names it.
The three-legger is the best argument this catalog has for the difference between what a mint recorded and what a die did. The mintage is the issue's; the premium is the die's; and the certification names which one you are buying.
| Issue | Mint | Mintage |
|---|---|---|
| 1937 Buffalo Nickel | Philadelphia | 79,480,000 |
| 1937-S Buffalo Nickel | San Francisco | 5,635,000 |
| 1937-D Buffalo Nickel | Denver | 17,826,000 |
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.