Just a question about a penny with the "s" mint mark.I started coin roll hunting just pennies,(bored out of my mind do to the winter up here in Mass.) and realized that there were few if any s pennies that i was seeing.Are these coins worth looking for and saving?I am just a metal detector guy going nuts waiting to put a shovel in the ground again.
Any S cents after 1974 are Proof coins. There were business strike S cents minted 1968-1974 as well as Proof coins with an S mint mark. Any S cents after 1974 are worth keeping. If in circulation and wear or marks are visible, they are considered Impaired Proofs.
It's always been harder to find S-mint coins on the East Coast. When I was a little kid searching through cents (couldn't afford nickels), I imagine not even one in a thousand had an S mint. And this was before San Francisco stopped minting cents for circulation. The same thing applies for nickels, although I'd guess I see S-mint nickels a bit more frequently than cents. My impression is that the older nickels haven't been driven out of circulation as much as the older cents. Also, the earlier (1950s) S-mint nickels weren't silver and didn't have a different design (see "wheat-back" cents), so they didn't get pulled from circulation as heavily by collectors or hoarders.
