1941 Jefferson Five Cents 1938-1964 VF30

History

The Buffalo nickel reached the 25-year minimum then required before a circulating design could be replaced, and it had long been troublesome to produce, needing die modifications for its high-relief areas. In January 1938 the Treasury announced a design competition for a replacement, offering a $1,000 prize and tying the theme to the coming 200th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's birth in 1943. The contest was open to all American sculptors, and German-born American artist Felix Oscar Schlag took the award over a field of 390 entrants, working within rules that required a portrait of the third president on the obverse and his Charlottesville home, Monticello, on the reverse. By 1941 the type was in its fourth year of production, still in standard copper-nickel alloy, as the wartime 35 percent silver composition did not arrive until mid-1942.

Details

Felix Schlag designed both sides. The coin was struck in 75 percent copper and 25 percent nickel, weighs 5.00 grams, measures 21.2 millimeters across and has a plain edge. Philadelphia produced 203,265,000 business strikes in 1941, along with 18,720 proofs. The no-mint-mark business strike is the base Type 1 original design as catalogued by PCGS.

Features

The obverse carries a left-facing bust of Jefferson after the Houdon portrait, and the reverse shows a frontal elevation of Monticello, with the mint mark position for the series sitting to the right of the building. Schlag did not accept the government's offer to add his FS initials until 1966, so a genuine 1941 nickel shows no designer's initials below the bust. Full Steps, meaning complete and sharply struck stair lines on Monticello, is the designation that separates premium examples from ordinary Mint State coins, and PCGS assigns it a separate catalog number, 84010. PCGS lists no die variety of its own for the Philadelphia 1941, only the base strike and the Full Steps entry.

Notable facts

• The Jefferson nickel remained Schlag's only coin design, despite other competition wins and commissions over his career.
• PCGS records $5,175 for a Full Steps MS67 example sold in January 2006.
• The 1941 proof holds a recorded price of $18,800 for a PR68 in June 2013, making it far more valuable than any circulation strike of the date.
• Attributed 1941 varieties are branch-mint issues, including the 1941-S Large S (FS-501) and the 1941-S Inverted Mint Mark (FS-503).
• The 1938-D, at 5,376,000 pieces, had a mintage roughly one thirty-eighth that of the 1941 Philadelphia issue.