how do u tell difference between sms and regular strike? I ask because I found one on a auction site that says sms and it list at around $130, but id swear its a regular strike that list for $25.00 but how am I to tell NGC whats what, lol
If you want an SMS coin, you can get a set for $10 or less, all day long. Quick search https://www.thespruce.com/what-is-a-special-mint-set-768864
I know about the sets, this one is graded ngc sms ms66. its a quarter by the way I noticed I didn't mention earlier.
Coin World lists this at $7.00 in MS65 but then jumps to $700.00 in MS 67. No listing in between, so maybe the seller is trying to find a price in between these two grades. Have you done a comparison search for others by NGC or PCGS at the same grade?
found a pcgs 1966 sms ms68 on a auction site for $26.00 I don't know what sms mega red is talking about, cause all 1966 sms coins I find list at the low end for a 1966.
well as best I can tell this one I was looking at is the 25.00 coin. And there are sms coins, sms proof cameo coins, and sms deep cameo coins, from what I could figure out on pcgs site. but mega red does not list these coins, it just list sms, so its very misleading imo.
They have a lot of modern prices wrong or misleading and most all of them have been doing it for many years.
If you are just looking at an example of each side by side, the sad truth is most of the time you can't ! But then that's kind of to be expected because that was the mint's intention to begin with. The mint didn't want anyone to be able to tell the difference ! And it's not just collectors who can't tell one from the other, the TPGs can't do it either. If you want to own '65, '66, '67 SMS coins then your best bet is to buy original sets in original mint packaging.
That's true if you're looking at very high end strikes and grades but an experienced collector can separate business strikes and SMS with a near 100% accuracy. The problem with accuracy is two fold. For one there is some junk in the SMS's. A few of these look a lot like circulation issues and aren't much better struck. But this affects only about 5% of the SMS. The other problem is that the mint did put a few really nice coins in circulation. Some of these were struck at San Francisco from retired SMS dies so good strikes are very difficult to differentiate. Every year some dies get a little special handling and if any of these dies turn out any good coins they might look like an SMS. A good rule of thumb is that if it's very high grade and isn't obviously struck for circulation than it is SMS. I'm sure this doesn't always work and have heard of people submitting coins straight from rolls and have it come back SMS but generally you really can tell the difference with experience. I'd warn people to be very careful with paying large premiums for business strikes since some of these may be SMS. The services always default to grading everything SMS but they could make a mistake. Unless a coin is obviously not SMS don't pay a big premium for grade. The SMS's are very underappreciated. They are some really great coins and there's something for every taste. While I hate the look of something like the polished die '66 quarters these are really quite scarce. Only about 1% have this look. Indeed, whatever kind of look you like can be found and many are scarce.
The higher priced ones are the sms proof coins. They are not listed as proofs in the book far as i can tell.
Sam I readily agree there's a lot of people who think they can, but in the end it boils down to guess work. I've seen coins that were in original SMS sets sent in for grading and 3 would come back SMS and 2 not. And sometimes even none of them as SMS. Other times all of them. Or, coins already slabbed as SMS cracked out and resubmitted and come back business strikes - same TPG both times. Or, business strikes already slabbed cracked out and resubmitted and come back SMS. Or, NGC says SMS and PCGS says business strike - same coin. And then the direct opposite happen, PCGS says SMS and NGC business strike. And none of these are isolated examples, to the contrary, they are the norm. So with a track record like that it's kind of hard to say it's anything BUT guess work.
Certain SMS coins are easily identifiable from circulation strikes (the dcam, cam, heavily mirrored proof look) but I'd say over half of them are indistinguishable from high grade circulation strikes. In fact it's why the TPG tend to label any really high MS circ look coins as SMS's. That being said if you want to buy SMS coins and get nice ones you can still cherry pick a few nice coins in sets here and there but you'd be much better off just buying the coins you want that have been already slabbed or sets other have formed. People have been picking over the supply out there for half a century now and while there are still some hidden gems they're getting hard to find.
This might be true but even if it were the fact remains it's irrelevant. It's irrelevant because virtually every single 1965 quarter made was a piece of garbage. They just didn't make many that were very high grade. Also don't forget people didn't save rolls of coins after 1964. Combine almost universal garbage production with a small population and you can be quite sure almost all high grade coins are SMS. I tend to agree that it's easier and cheaper to just buy the coins slabbed. It used to require extreme effort to find these and now most of the nicest ones aren't even worth the cost of slabbing. But if you can get close to the head of the supply chain it's not that difficult to find original sets. These still come on the market and you can still find nice cameo coins. Indeed, once in a while you can even find a batch of the cherries among the cherry picked. There's not as much low hanging fruit as there was in the '80's or '90's but it's still out there.
It is tough with some coins. I might be exaggerating when I say nearly 100% accuracy because there is a range of processes and techniques that were used to strike SMS and, as I said, a small minority of them look just like business strikes. The only thing that sets these apart from business strikes is that they are well struck by good dies. Of course, at least in theory, some business strikes are well struck by good dies so there are a few coins that could go either way. Usually the services grade these SMS. If I were asked to differentiate 500 RANDOM business strikes from 500 RANDOM SMS I probably would miss no more than one. Of course if you make that the 500 finest business strikes from 500 clean SMS then I'd miss a lot more, but probably no more than 30 or 40. Telling these apart is a matter of experience and with some SMS and some business strikes you can't be certain. I've even used to see the polished die strikes in circulation back in the day. But the SMS version is a little uglier.
I'm not sure anyone recognizes proofs of these dates. Me? Yes, I'm sure there are proofs in some of the SMS's. The ones that appear fully proof are not cameo and not even heavily PL, but they have flat surfaces and are fully struck. The luster is a little different and is hard to describe but it's less reflective and closer grained. I believe these were made inadvertently and are a more common variety that was struck twice. I've seen only about ten examples.
