Can anyone guess what this mint mark was supposed to be, and if it makes the dime worth a zillion dollars?
It is hard to tell from the pictures, but I am guessing either damage (like it took a hit) or a die chip. Certainly not worth much if it is an error. My personal experience is not being able to sell coins with die chips I found for almost anything. Others will chime in with other opinions, I am sure.
Try to get in the habit of looking up images of coins - NGC, PCGS, Heritage, whatever. This would immediately tell you that they all have it, because it's the designer initials. I'm not criticizing because it took me a long time to learn this myself. I used to think the D on a 1920 Pilgrim commemorative half was a mint mark and so I had something rare because none of the guides showed a 1920-D. Nope.
@BronzeAge If you had a Red Book you could have learned that this date was one of 3 years that had no mint mark as it was the 3rd year of initial clad coinage. Knowing this would have helped you realize you were looking at the designers’ initials. Mint marks continued in 1968. The Red Book has the background history for all our coins.
No mint marks on U.S. circulating coins in 1965, 1966, and 1967. This was all part of the 1965 Coinage act to stop silver from being in the dimes and quarters and to reduce the amount of silver in the halves. That was all fine and good but they went further to say no mint marks on circulating coins and just special mint sets instead of actual proof sets, as part of an intent to discourage coin collectors in that time.
Also it was thought that coins with mint marks were being hoarded. As the D and S mints were generally rarer than the no mint mark (P) coins. So they took the mint marks off. All 3 mints produced coins in 65 66 and 67, but there is no way to tell which coins came from which mint, and people assume they are all Philly coins which they aren't.
Pretty much, but since I lived in California, I always thought that they either came from Denver or Sacramento. I remember when they started putting mintmarks on them in 1968, that I saw quite a few nickels from the Sacramento mint.
Guess what. You are right. And my starting to be decrepit mind put in Sacramento instead of San Francisco. What a fool I feel like, getting that wrong. But I do remember getting them. For some reason back then the S mint mark nickels were always better struck than the D's and much better than the 65-67 no MM issues going around. It was super cool to see that again right at the time that collecting coins was something I became interested in.
No need to feel foolish, we all have brain farts now and again. What I remember, in 1965, when I got my first clad dime was that it was from Philadelphia and started looking for Denver and San Francisco types. Eventually my 14 year old brain learned what the buzz was all about and immediately started hoarding silver- - - exactly the opposite result for which they were made. I never really had an affinity for clad coins, and, to me, it made all the pre-‘65 silver much more important. And you know what? They actually were more special then and still are…Spark
