Emily Chan
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.
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