When a mint error is first discovered, a predictably lengthy process is begun involving multiple recognized experts in the field to examine and scrutinize the coin’s authenticity under high magnification to separate a bona fide error from a manufactured counterfeit.

Ideally, after sufficient time and examinations have been made, the coin is either accepted or rejected by the numismatic community. But, in reality, there is a third possibility – unending disagreement among the experts. This outcome, of course, leaves many of us who are looking for definitive answers in relative limbo.

If decades go by and recognized, numismatic authorities still are conflicted as to the authenticity of the coin, what then? If, for instance, someone tried to buy or sell a specimen with this error to a dealer, another collector or at auction, how could they vouch for the legitimacy of the error and, in turn, ask a realistic price? This article is devoted to one such enigma that the author discovered by accident.

In a relatively recent attempt to determine if the Smithsonian Institute’s buffalo nickel collection was missing any specimens after all these years, an email inquiry was sent in early January to Mr. Richard Doty, the senior curator of numismatics for the Behring Center.

Sent from the American Museum of Natural History Behring Center where the coins are stored, Mr. Doty’s e-mail responded, “Your inquiry was passed to me. We do have a set of buffalo nickels, only lacking the 1934 two-legged and 1916 doubled die and 1918/7 varieties.”

Nineteen thirty-four, two-legged? When anyone specializes in one coin and finds (after decades devoted to researching that coin) that a variety exists unknown to that collector, it’s a very humbling experience.

A search of the Red Book, several Internet population reports, and reference books containing buffalo mint errors revealed many mint errors were listed but no mention of any two-legged varieties.

Determined to find one or more sources that mentioned the authenticity of the variety’s existence or debunked its legitimacy, a search was begun with e-mails and references in local libraries to provide sufficient data to pose this “discrepancy” to you readers for your evaluation.

Agreeing with the researched sources, Walter Breen discredits these varieties by acknowledging the 1937- D, three-legged variety but warning, “On the other hand, the 1935 and 1936 two-legs coins have lately been proved counterfeit, the 1936 unmintmarked and ‘S’ coins having the same obverse die. All are overweight despite apparent extreme wear, the blebs (or raised lumps) on surfaces of both dates, and the distortions of lettering, are inconsistent with mint technology of the period.”

The next obvious inquiry was to try to determine what sources Mr. Doty used from which he determined the Smithsonian’s collection was missing one or more, two-legged buffaloes. His prompt and helpful reply stated, “I found the coins mentioned in Bill Fivas and J.T. Stanton’s ‘Cherrypickers Guide” and Frank G. Spadone’s ‘Major Variety-Oddity Guide of United States Coins.”

Weeks later the second book mentioned (Spadone’s) arrived in the mail, ordered from Amazon.com, and sure enough, an alarming picture of a two-legged variety appears with both the right foreleg and right hind-leg missing. The quality of the photograph, unfortunately, wasn’t outstanding, but the “blank” area where the right hindleg should be is unmistakable.

The final piece to the puzzle, the Fivas/Stanton book, arrived later and “supported” the non-existence of the variety by its absence.

I wonder if they make prosthetic legs for Buffaloes?

He called me to report his find on the same day and mailed two of the coins to me for attribution on the next day. Upon inspecting one, I found that it was not only a doubled die that was similar to the Adams doubled die that Chichinski had seen in Billy Crawford’s, Die Variety News #9, (the variety alluded to on the www.coins.about.com web site) but that it was almost identical to an earlier find that was reported by my co-columnist, John Wexler in his August 20 Varieties Notebook column that we share alternately in the first and third issues of Coin World every month.

Both the Washington and new Jefferson reverses displayed arrowhead shaped hub doubling (and some traces of hub doubling to the west on the Jefferson dollar) that appear to have their origins in the folds of drapery bunched up on Liberty’s right arm directly below the doubling.

The area of doubling on all the Presidential dollar doubled die varieties reported thus far (which is at least three for the Washington dollar and one for the Adams dollar) represents the virtual dead center of the coin’s design. This is an important key their attribution because specialists believe they are the result of tilted hubs that were seated into proper position during hubbing.

In 1997 when the first doubled die cent was discovered that was produced from dies presumed to be made via the single-squeeze hubbing process, (showing on the coin as a doubled earlobe along with over a dozen other areas of doubling in Lincoln’s hair), I first proposed that a tilted hub seated into position by the force of the single impression of the hub was the most probable cause. Since that time most specialists have come to agree that this is the most probable explanation for most (if not the vast majority) of significant single-squeeze produced doubled dies.

Tilted Hub Doubling restricted to such a small area of design within the center region of the die might also be possible due the hub being backed off after the initial kiss of the hub into a tilted die blank being reset into the press properly and hubbed again. However, with the Presidential doubled dies, we are so far into the single-squeeze hubbing era that researchers feel the doubling would have most likely occurred when a tilted hub/die seated into proper position within the single-squeeze of the hub. As the name implies, the single-squeeze hubbing procedure, impresses a complete design into a die with just one pass of the hub.

It should be understood that the face of a die blank (referred to as a “die block” in Mint jargon) is machined with a slightly conical configuration to aid in the flow of metal during hubbing. This would indicate that the initial kiss of a hub into a die blank would be restricted to this centralized area before continuing on to fill out the rest of the design. During this process the tip of a titled die blank would be positioned slightly off location away from the center of the hub into a different area of design than intended and thus the misplaced area of doubling on the affected die.

Chichinski’s find has been listed into the Variety Coin Register for date, denomination and design type as VCR#1/DDR#001.