1968 No S Proof Proof

The 1968 No S Proof Roosevelt Dime is the first of the famous No-S proof errors and one of the headline modern rarities in all of U.S. coinage. When the proof program resumed at the San Francisco Assay Office in 1968 after a three-year hiatus filled by the Special Mint Sets, every proof die was supposed to carry an S mintmark below the date on the obverse. At least one obverse die went into production without that mintmark, and a small number of coins were struck and packaged into proof sets before the mistake was caught. PCGS has certified roughly two dozen examples across all grades, which makes this one of the rarest deliberately collected coins of the second half of the twentieth century. Realizations run from roughly $20,000 in lower proof grades to $45,000 and beyond for top-grade Cameo and Deep Cameo pieces, with a Heritage PR69 reaching $45,600 in 2021.

Authentication of a 1968 No S Proof is a high-stakes exercise and must follow specific rules. The diagnostic that defines the coin is the complete absence of the S mintmark from its location below the date, paired with the surface signature of a proof strike: deeply mirrored fields, squared rims, and crisp design transitions that no business strike from Philadelphia could reproduce. Any 1968 dime claimed as a No-S proof must be examined for proof characteristics first; an ordinary Philadelphia circulation coin from the same year shares the lack of mintmark but has matte, frosty fields and rounded rim transitions. Beyond surface analysis, the only acceptable provenance is encapsulation by PCGS or NGC with an explicit "No S" attribution on the holder label. Any raw coin, any uncertified holder, and any third-party slab without explicit No-S designation should be treated as fraudulent or as an unattributed candidate that has failed certification.

The market for this issue is small and consequential. Each appearance is a noted event in the auction calendar, and most examples trace their provenance through a short list of well-documented collections. For the broader story of the No-S proof errors and how the San Francisco resumption produced them, see the Roosevelt Dime series history.