Just wanted to toot my own horn lol. This felt like one of those deals we talk about from the 70's or 80's lol. A seller I already trusted had a bunch of proofs on sale...I won and with shipping the coins cost me about $1 each!!! The only reason I bid is because this seller doesn't sell many coins and looking at the fairly blurry photos I thought a couple of the proofs looked interesting. Especially since the seller was NOT trying to make them look great lol. ...I was right about the 2 nickels that looked interesting, totally natural beautiful toning Some of the proofs are almost perfect and some are barely impaired, but I'm SO happy with this little purchase. It's been a while since ten bucks brought me this kind of satisfaction lol
That '65 is something!! They won't grade them as Full Step but even the SMS nickels are very tough in FS and someday there will be a demand for them.
I'll take close ups...they are 100% full perfect steps. As proofs should be Yup, proofs don't get FS designations.
Most proofs of most dates are FS. A date like 1982 would be pretty tough to find without FS and the problem will be a mark rather than a bad strike. But SMS coins are mostly far more like "mint sets" than proof sets. Most SMS nickels were struck only once so even though most dies had all the steps they do not show up on many of the coins. And then the steps are often damaged in handling. The long and short of it is that both FS and FB on dimes can be far tougher than other mint set coins. I recently went through several hundred '66 SMS nice choice nickels and found fewer than 1% that were FS. The '67 is comparable. The '65 was only a little easier. 1% is an awful lot of coins for today's demand but as time goes by there are fewer and fewer and more and more demand. I doubt there are even 15,000 still in existence and finding one in pristine condition isn't as easy as it was back when you could walk into any coin shop and look through 100 sets. Now you'd have to look through 300 sets and in 30 coin shops. Then there's a very good chance the first one you find will be tarnished. Some of the FB dimes are even tougher and more likely to be tarnished.
