 1937'D' Three-Legged. Gem Brilliant Uncirculated, near Superb. Blazing white lustre throughout with a rose-gold tint starting to form. The surfaces are wonderfully clean and attractive, and show just a couple of tiny handling nicks. For this important and highly collectible issue, the strike is decent, although softness is found on the Indian's head and portions of the bison. Nevertheless, the present coin is certainly one of the finer examples to exist of this immensely popular issue.
Breen describes the events that led up to this oddity as follows. The coiner was a novice, a Mr. Young, who had a large quota of Nickels to produce that day back in 1937. The dies clashed, and rather than take the time to replace them, he took an emery stick and filed off the reverse die field, thus removing most of the clashmarks, but in the process also removing the bison's foreleg! Not only that, but the hind leg was left a mere shadow of its former self, and now had the appearance of being moth-eaten. It appears that the dies were quickly cleaned up, perhaps on a circular wheel as the obverse shows faint striations near the Indian's temple and hair, and the reverse developed a strategically located stream of raised specks emanating from between the bison's hind legs. These do not appear to be clashmarks, but were perhaps caused during Mr. Young's attempted improvement of the dies. The bison himself has a rather surprised look on his face at the events that crippled him. Whatever the cause, the results were soon numismatically discovered and this remains one of the most popular mint issues of the Twentieth Century. NGC MS66.
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