A remarkably rare dime, whose location had been unknown since the late 1970s, recently sold for slightly over $500,000. The coin was minted by the U.S. Mint in San Francisco in 1975 and features a depiction of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It is one of only two known examples that lack the distinctive “S” mint mark.
The dime was inherited by three sisters from Ohio after the death of their brother, who had stored it in a bank vault for over four decades. The coin fetched $506,250 at the conclusion of an online auction on Sunday, as stated by Ian Russell, the president of GreatCollections, an auction firm located in Irvine, California.
An image provided by GreatCollections shows a 1975 proof set dime that was mistakenly produced without the San Francisco Mint’s “S” mint mark.
The only other known example of the “1975 ‘no S’ proof dime” was sold at an auction in 2019 for $456,000 and changed hands again to a private collector a few months later.
In 1975, the San Francisco mint produced over 2.8 million special uncirculated “proof” sets, which included six coins and were sold for $7. It was later discovered by collectors that two of the dimes in these sets were missing the mint mark.
Russell mentioned that the sisters, opting for anonymity, explained that they inherited one of these two error dimes. Their brother and mother had purchased the first discovered error coin in 1978 for $18,200, which would be approximately $90,000 in today’s money. Their parents, who ran a dairy farm, considered the coin to be a financial safeguard.