$506,250 for a Dime — The S Is Missing #Shorts

Could a third one still be hiding in a 1975 proof set somewhere — or are two all there ever were? 👇

$506,250 — that’s what a ten-cent dime sold for, and the reason is something missing.

The coin is a 1975 Roosevelt dime struck as a proof at San Francisco — except its die never got the “S” mintmark that belongs above the date. Only two examples are known. Both were discovered by one California collector who ordered five 1975 proof sets at $7 each and found a No-S dime in two of them.

The PCGS Proof-67 (CAC) example: an Ohio family bought it in 1978 for $18,200, kept it for 46 years as a financial safety net, and sold it at GreatCollections on October 27, 2024 for $506,250 including the buyer’s premium, after 212 bids — a public auction record for the issue, two years ago today. CoinWeek told the full story of the woman behind both rarities this morning. The other example (PCGS Proof-68) sold for $456,000 at Heritage in September 2019 and resold privately five days later for $516,000.

The check is free: look at the dime in any old 1975 proof set. But it must be a mirror-like proof — a worn 1975 dime with no mintmark is an ordinary Philadelphia circulation strike worth ten cents.

🔎 Full write-up with diagnostics + mintage:

Subscribe to Caps Coins and Treasures for more coin stories:

📚 I wrote the playbook:
– The Weekend Coin Dealer —
– CapsCoinsAndTreasures Field Guides (coming soon):
– What Your Inherited Coin Collection Is Worth
– Spotting Cleaned and Counterfeit Coins
– The eBay Coin Seller’s Fee Math
– Grading Morgan Dollars From Photos

Narration is AI-generated (synthetic voice). The coin photos shown are genuine public-domain U.S. Mint-design Roosevelt dime photos (via Wikimedia Commons), labeled on screen as type photos; the auction specimens’ own photos are not used.

source