The Jefferson Nickel: A Public Contest, a War, and a Coin Still in Your Pocket

For thirty years, Americans had spent the Buffalo nickel — a coin everyone loved and the Mint quietly hated, because its high relief wore out dies fast and its dates rubbed flat. By 1938 it had served the legal minimum of 25 years, and the Mint was free to replace it.

What happened next was rare. Instead of handing the job to its own engravers, the Mint held an open competition. The brief was specific: put Thomas Jefferson — the third president, whose 200th birthday was coming in 1943 — on the obverse (the "heads" side), and put Monticello, the Virginia home Jefferson designed himself, on the reverse (the "tails" side).

Roughly 390 artists entered. The winner, announced in April 1938, was Felix Schlag, a sculptor who had emigrated from Germany only a decade earlier. His prize was $1,000 — and the strange distinction of designing one of the most-produced objects in human history while remaining, for years, almost anonymous on it.

The first Jefferson nickels reached circulation on November 15, 1938. They have never stopped.

Schlag's obverse is a left-facing portrait of Jefferson. The art historian Cornelius Vermeule noted it leans closely on the 1789 marble bust of Jefferson by the French sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon — a likeness taken from life. The reverse shows Monticello head-on, calm and symmetrical, with the mansion's name spelled out beneath it.

That head-on view was not Schlag's first idea. His original reverse showed Monticello at a three-quarter angle, with real architectural depth — and the Treasury rejected it, asking for a flatter, more straightforward front view and new lettering. Schlag complied. The coin we know is the compromise, not the artist's first vision.

Stranger still: Schlag's initials are nowhere on the early coins. The Mint left them off. Only in 1966 were the tiny letters "FS" finally added below Jefferson's shoulder — 28 years late, while the designer was still alive to see it.

The portrait Schlag drew rode unchanged into the 21st century before the Mint reopened the design. In 2004–2005, for the bicentennial of the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark expedition, the Mint ran the Westward Journey series — a short run of new reverses (and, in 2005, a new Jefferson profile) by several artists. Then in 2006 a forward-facing portrait of Jefferson by Jamie Franki, sculpted by Donna Weaver, became the permanent obverse — and Schlag's original Monticello returned to the reverse, where it remains. Schlag's "FS" moved with it, to the right of the building.

Nickel is a strategic war metal — it hardens armor plating. So in October 1942, with the country fully in World War II, Congress ordered the metal stripped out of the five-cent coin. The Mint replaced it with an alloy of 56% copper, 35% silver, and 9% manganese. For three years the "nickel" contained no nickel at all — but it did contain silver, which is why these "war nickels" are still pulled from circulation and pocket change today.

The Mint had a second problem: how would future Americans recover this odd silver alloy from the billions of ordinary nickels already out there? Its answer is the most visible clue on any U.S. coin of the era. War nickels carry a large mint mark floating above the dome of Monticello — and for the first time ever, coins struck in Philadelphia got a mint mark at all, a bold "P." Both marks were oversized on purpose, so the silver coins could be spotted and pulled fast once the war ended. It is the only time the Philadelphia "P" and that high mint mark appear; the mark dropped back below Monticello in 1946 and the nickel went back to copper-nickel.

The Jefferson series is famous for being finishable. A patient collector can assemble nearly the whole run from circulation and modest purchases — which is exactly why it has introduced generations of children to the hobby. The challenge isn't rarity; it's condition.

The key dates are the low-mintage early branch-mint coins. The 1950-D is the standout — just 2,630,030 struck, the lowest business-strike mintage in the series — though because collectors hoarded rolls of it at the time, plenty survive in high grade. The 1939-D (3,514,000) is the genuinely scarce one in worn condition. The 1939-S and 1942-D round out the dates that command real premiums.

The famous variety is the 1939 Doubled Monticello (also called the "Reverse of 1940"): a reverse die struck twice, slightly offset, so "MONTICELLO" and "FIVE CENTS" show clear doubling visible to the naked eye. The Mint reworked the reverse hub that year — sharpening Monticello's steps — and the doubled die is a relic of that transition.

Why high grades are scarce — and what "Full Steps" means. Look at the base of Monticello and you'll see a row of steps. On most Jefferson nickels those steps are mushy, because the deepest part of the design fills last and is the first to suffer from worn dies. A coin that shows five or six sharp, unbroken steps earns the Full Steps (FS) designation — and for many dates a true Full Steps coin is dramatically harder to find than a high grade alone. For some dates, none are known above a certain grade. That single detail — six clean steps — is where the real money and the real hunt live in this series.