A 1975 dime with a portrait of president Franklin Delano Roosevelt and a very rare error has been sold at auction for $506,250.
The 1975 Roosevelt dime was sold through an online auction at GreatCollections.
This example is now more valuable than the only other known instance of this coin.
The error is a missing mint mark.
The US has a number of mints. Most coins carry an initial to show where it was struck.
This dime was minted in San Francisco, where most proof sets for sale to collectors are made, and should have been given an S mark. However, in a number of years, dies made at the US Mint’s main facility in Philadelphia omitted the locating mint makers.
Artist John Sinnock working on the bust for the Roosevelt Dime. The coin is still minted and used today.
These coins are all sought-after rarities.
Dozens or hundreds exist of the misstruck coins from 1968, 1970, 1971, 1983, and 1990.
The 1975 coin is exceptionally rare, with just two known examples.
Most modern errors are spotted during production. This one made it out of the mint and into a proof set that was sold to a collector.
It found its way, via a dealer to a farming family, who also bought the other known no-S 1975 Roosevelt dime, intending to keep it as a family nest egg.
They paid $18,200 for that coin in 1978.
The current sale is from three Ohio sisters from that family, who have kept the coin for 40 years after inheriting it from their bother.
The other dime was sold for $456,000 in 2019 and immediately sold for over $500,000 in a private sale.
This dime climbed steadily in value to the sale closure on October 27.
Tantalisingly for collectors there may be more of these coins out there.
The two errors were found in proof sets. The San Francisco mint produced nearly 3 million of those sets in 1975. It’s possible that others contain this error.
If you’re looking for one, then pay attention to the dates on the coins, as the sets with the discovered errors included two coins dated 1976 for the US’s Bicentennial, in an attempt to boost sales.
