Realcent.org

I bought a bunch of buffaloes at an auction recently and noticed there is a dark smudge over the dates of a lot of the older ones. It's pretty obvious someone intentionally did something to the coin where the date is and my guess is it was to make the date more legible. It almost looks like the coins were burned or treated with a harsh chemical and rubbed hard and it really damaged the patina of the coin. I'm sure other people have seen this, I just don't deal with buffaloes very often. Anybody have any ideas?

It was a bad buy on my part, so I can't complain too much. But there was stuff in there like a 15D and a 17S that would be decent key date coins and are junk now. Just don't get why people do stuff like that.

there's a couple products out there for restoring dates on buffalo nickels such as nic-a-date

most that are done have a visible mintmark

some of the rarer dates sell ok on eBay - just make sure and let bidders know they are "restored" date

Yup, they were once dateless.