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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;cladking, post: 8444028, member: 68&quot;]I&#039;m surprised you say this. We&#039;re probably looking at exactly the same coins so I suspect the difference is in definitions.&nbsp; I&#039;m talking about five full steps, not six. I&#039;m not sure any of those I&#039;ve seen would go six steps. </p><p><br /></p><p>There is a lot of trouble with marking and weak spots knocking coins out of contention.&nbsp; About two out of three SMS nickels have enough marking to be excluded.&nbsp; Unlike most modern nickels there&#039;s a little correlation between being free of marking and having a good strike or they&#039;d be much scarcer.&nbsp; With many dates it seems the best made nickels are put aside for extra handling. </p><p><br /></p><p>The sets I cut up recently were far from random.&nbsp; They were sets that were cherry picked for many years going back to 1975 and FS was one of the criteria that was used to select sets.&nbsp; Indeed, I periodically went through and culled out substandard coins and sets.&nbsp; If I greatly exaggerated their incidence it was not intentional.&nbsp; I also used to chase down Gems by zip code since the mint made them in small batches and they went to the same zip code.&nbsp; I did a lot of driving and looking through dealers&#039; mint sets but it&#039;s hard to believe that the universe of sets I&#039;ve picked is vastly different than what you&#039;ve seen simply because most of the rejects I picked over would have been destroyed after i saw them.&nbsp; When mint sets used to hit the market they would accumulate in massive piles of inventory until the dealer cut them.&nbsp; Even today few mint sets are sold by coin shops.&nbsp; The reason few coin shops have much inventory is the sets have mostly been destroyed. </p><p><br /></p><p>I found the &#039;66 FS to be virtually &quot;common&quot; with a nearly 1% incidence.&nbsp; &nbsp; The &#039;65 is tough and the &#039;67 very tough.&nbsp; IMS the &#039;67&#039;s weren&#039;t as strongly struck as well and it&#039;s possible that some wouldn&#039;t even consider them FS.&nbsp; These are all in my safety deposit boxes so it might be a while before they see the light of day again. All my coins are for sale but not all at todays prices.&nbsp; I&#039;ve sold many Gems but mostly the finest and those two grades off the top.&nbsp; One grade from the top is greatly undervalued today so I&#039;ve sold very few.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;d be most interested in&nbsp; description of the SMS nickels you&#039;re looking at.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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