TOLEDO, Ohio — Three Ohio sisters who inherited a dime that had been sitting in a bank vault for more than 40 years knew it had some value. But they had no idea how much until a few years ago.
The extraordinarily rare coin, struck by the U.S. Mint in San Francisco in 1975, could fetch more than $500,000, said Ian Russell, president of GreatCollections, a currency company hosting an online auction ending in October.
What makes the dime featuring President Franklin D. Roosevelt so valuable is a missing “S” mintmark for San Francisco, one of two known to not exist. The other was auctioned in 2019 for $456,000, then sold months later to a private collector.
Although serious coin collectors have long known of the existence of these two rare dimes, their whereabouts have remained a mystery since the late 1970s.
“They were hidden for decades,” Russell said. “Most of the major collectors and dealers have never seen one.”
The San Francisco Mint produced more than 2.8 million special, uncirculated, six-coin “proof” sets in 1975, which sold for $7. Collectors discovered a few years later that two dimes from the set were missing the mint mark.
The Ohio sisters who inherited one of those two pennies after their brother’s recent death wish to remain anonymous because of their sudden windfall, Russell said.
They told Russell that their brother and mother bought the first error coin discovered in 1978 for $18,200, which would be about $90,000 today. Their parents, who ran a dairy farm, saw the coin as a financial safety net.
One of the sisters said her brother often talked about the rare coin, but she had only seen it with her own eyes last year.
Russell, whose company is based in Irvine, California, said their brother approached him about seven years ago and eventually told him about the coin. He, too, kept it a secret.
When Russell told one of the sisters a few years ago that the coin had potential value, she said, “Is that really possible?”
Now the coin, known as the “1975 ‘no S’ proof dime,” will be on display at a coin show starting Wednesday in Tampa, Florida, before the auction closes in late October, Russell said.
While there’s a chance more examples of the rare dime exist, they would only be found in the 1975 “proof” sets and not in anyone’s pocket change, Russell said.
Still, he expects that this latest discovery will lead to a lot of research.
