S Mint Mark

[Guest]

Iv been seeing people on youtube and a few other places always saying they sit the S mint mark cents aside to go through again with a magnifying glass. This is a noob question but why is that?

[Chugly]

They may be vaguely referring to checking for the 1970-S small date cent? That's a coin that a lot of people know to check for and its been pretty hyped over the years. There are also a number a very nice doubled dies for the early '70-s S mint cents, but it would make more sense that someone was only partially informed and babbling on youtube instead.

[Garrett]

ah ok I see. thanks

[simonm]

They might be under the impression that all S-mint cents are "special", which is not the case. While it is true that there are more key date S-mints than non-key dates, the vast majority of cents minted in San Francisco have large mintage numbers and (in my opinion) are not really worth holding onto.

[Garrett]

I knew that the S-mints was in San Francisco but didn't know they had large numbers which is good to know.

Im in Texas so I find more Denver mints iv noticed than San Francisco's

[GrumpyEd]

One thing about roll searching is that if you learn about more things to look for you'll have a lot more to find.

Doubled dies
RPMs
Errors
high grades
rare dates
Wide/close AMs
Rare RDVs

There's a lot of stuff that we missed when we just started, I spent years only looking for wheat cents and probably missed a bunch of good stuff.

[Garrett]

Thanks for the tips Grumpy I have done my fair share of research wish I did that much research in school woulda had better grades lol!
I started off thinking I was just going to pull wheats, Indians and copper but I really enjoy looking for the rare dates and all that.

[liveandievarieties]

For the record, some people DO save all of their S-Mint memorials- I sell them in lots of 1000 and get 3-4x face value, as much as common wheats when sold in quantity.

[Garrett]

What are the S-mint memorials look like? Or are they just normal cents?

[simonm]

What are the S-mint memorials look like? Or are they just normal cents?

The memorial cents minted in San Francisco look normal, aside from the S mintmark located below the date.

[Garrett]

Iv passed up tons of them then! Prolly missed 100 or so

[BadThad]

I used to save the 70's S mints because they are pretty scarce in Cincinnati.....until my friend Scotty told me he finds them by the bucket load in CA. Now I only save them if they're BU.

[admrose]

I hold on to any S mintmarks except '68-'74. Personal preference though.

[simonm]

Living in San Francisco, I find 1-2 1970-S cents per roll. (Most of them are fairly circulated, though.)

[Garrett]

I just saw ptolly 50-100 in the box I searched here in texas but didnt set any S mints a side.
I might go back and pull them