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Message:: [QUOTE="-jeffB, post: 1895124, member: 27832"]I'm not sure anyone has explained this directly yet in the thread, so let me try. There were over 100 million "No S" nickels minted in 1971 -- regular circulation strikes from the Philadelphia mint. In those days, Philadelphia-minted coins had no mint mark. The four nickels you've shown are these circulation strikes. They're worth five cents each. There were over 3 million proof nickels minted in 1971. All were supposed to have the "S" mint mark. A few hundred, maybe a thousand or more, were accidentally minted without the mint mark. Those are rare and valuable. But even after being heavily circulated, proof coins differ from regular business-strike coins. With a little experience, you can identify circulated proofs pretty easily. The coins in your picture aren't circulated proofs. We see the same question come up frequently here, usually about dimes -- there were "No S" proof dimes in 1968, 1970, 1975, and 1983. Again, though, there were many millions of business strikes with no S (or D). If you find a no-S coin in change, it's not a valuable rarity. Yes, it could be -- but you've got much better odds of winning the lottery, then nearly being struck by lightning on your way to claim your winnings, except that at the last second an incoming meteor deflected the bolt.[/QUOTE]