Three sisters from Ohio recently sold a rare dime featuring a portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt for $500,000.
They owned the dime jointly and sold it on October 27 through GreatCollections, an auction house that specializes in valuable coins and currency.
The dime was produced in San Francisco in 1975. It was once part of a large collection of “proof” dimes.
It was also one of the only two coins from that set to contain a missing “S” mint mark. The error made the coin a valuable collector’s item.
“This is a very exciting coin for our company to auction,” said Ian Russell, the president of GreatCollections.
“We’ve handled many trophy coins over the years, including two 1913 nickels and two 1804 silver dollars—but this is the first time for the 1975 ‘no S’ proof dime.”
According to a statement from GreatCollections, the mother and brother of the three sisters bought the coin in 1978 for $18,200, which is equivalent to roughly $90,000 today.
They inherited the coin when their brother died. Before then, the coin had been stored in a bank vault for more than 40 years.
The family had considered it as a “financial safety net” for their dairy farm. One of the sisters noted that their brother had spoken of the coin often, but she had never seen it with her own eyes until recently.
Stephen Orsillo – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only
The missing “S” is significant because it was supposed to represent a mint mark. Mint marks are letters that specify where a coin was produced. For instance, the Mint’s Philadelphia branch used to mark their coins with the letter “P.”
“[Mint marks] hold the maker responsible for the quality of a coin,” wrote the United States Mint. “When the U.S. used precious metals such as gold and silver to make circulating coins, a commission evaluated the metal compositions and quality of coins from each of the Mint facilities. The evaluations ensured that each facility produced coins for the correct specifications.”
The San Francisco Mint produced a “proof” set of over 2.8 million coins in 1975. Three years later, collectors realized that two of the dimes in the set did not have the “S” mark.
The two dimes are the only “no S” proof dimes from 1975 known to exist. It is possible there are others that just haven’t been brought to the attention of experts.
In 2019, the other known example was sold for $456,000. The buyers resold it for $516,000 five days later.
“It was a great honor for me to own the finest known 1975 ‘no S’ dime, if even for just a few days,” said Mitch Spivack, a coinage expert who was one of the buyers in 2019.
“As the owner of the unique 1976 ‘no S’ silver Eisenhower dollar for many years now…I always dreamed of also owning the 1975 ‘no S’ dime. That dream became a reality to me!”
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