We’ve covered much about no-mintmark Roosevelt Dimes over the years, including the famous 1975 No-S Roosevelt Dime that is worth more than a half-million dollars. But there are many collectors, especially those who are not well versed on the history of U.S. coinage during the mid-1960s, who are looking for mintmarked Roosevelt Dimes and other coins from that period and just can’t find them. There’s a very good reason why a collector pursuing, say, a 1965-D Roosevelt Dime or 1967-D Washington Quarter will never find these coins. None were made!
There’s a long story behind why no mintmarks were added to any other U.S. coins of the mid-1960s. It goes back to a massive coin shortage that began in the early 1960s, a time when coin collecting was hitting new highs in popularity just as silver bullion prices were also traipsing into record pricing territory. Millions of people were pulling coins from circulation to fill coin collections or to profit from the silver. It was also when commerce demand for new coins was reaching unprecedented heights thanks to a population explosion; Baby Boomers were entering their early working and spending years as adolescents and teenagers.
The United States government faced many headwinds, including rising silver prices and a seemingly insatiable demand for new coins. Congress passed a law in 1965 that authorized the U.S. Mint to convert the 90% silver composition of the dime and quarter to a copper-nickel clad format; the half dollar subsequently was debased to a 40% silver composition before also adopting the copper-nickel clad profile in 1971. This addressed the cost issues prompted by rising silver prices. But what about the coin shortage?
In essence, most of the coin hoarding problems the U.S. Mint was trying to combat had far more to do with silver stackers than with coin collectors. However, some U.S. Mint officials had formed a conclusion that coin collectors were largely responsible for the coin shortage. Therefore, in an effort to mitigate collecting activity, the U.S. Mint removed mintmarks from all coins beginning in 1965 and abstained from using them until the coin shortage was over. In one further move to focus attention on the production of business-strike coins, the U.S. Mint temporarily stopped making traditional uncirculated and proof sets beginning in 1965, replacing them with so-called “Special Mint Sets.”
The practice of striking coins sans mintmarks continued through 1967, with the mints in Philadelphia and Denver as well as San Francisco making coins without any distinguishing marks. While production figures reveal how many of each coin the three mint facilities struck from 1965 through 1967, there is no numismatically verifiable way to tell, say, a 1965 Lincoln Cent struck in Philadelphia from one that hailed from the Denver Mint or San Francisco.
By 1968, the coin shortage had been largely abated, and mintmarks returned to U.S. coins – along with the resumption of annual uncirculated and proof sets. While things had largely returned to a new normal at the U.S. Mint, collectors to this day are left with a three-year gap in the normal date-and-mintmark collecting that guides the assemblage of so many modern coin sets. While this frustrates some collectors, those who know the story behind the fervent coin production of the mid-1960s at least know the history behind why mintmarks were temporarily abandoned – and why they’ll never find a U.S. coin struck from 1965 through 1967 with a mintmark.