An extremely rare dime whose location has been unknown since the late 1970s has sold at auction for just over $500,000.
Three sisters from an Ohio dairy farm inherited the coin after the death of their brother, who chose to store it in a bank vault for more than forty years.
The coin is so valuable because it has an imperfection.
It was made in 1975 by the U.S. Mint in San Francisco and features Franklin D. Roosevelt, but this dime is only one of two known not to have the distinctive “S” mint mark above the engraved year.
The 10-cent piece sold for $506,250 in an online auction that concluded Sunday, according to Ian Russell, president of GreatCollections, an auction house based in Irvine, California.
The only other known example of a 1975 dime without the trademark ‘S’ was sold at auction for $456,000 in 2019 and again to a private collector months later.
The imperfect dime, left, is the dime that sold at auction for $500,000. The dime on the right is what almost all coins look like. There is an S above the mint date
The San Francisco mint made more than 2.8 million special, uncirculated six-coin “proof” sets in 1975, selling for $7. Collectors discovered a few years later that two dimes from the set were missing the mint mark.
Russell said the Ohio sisters wished to remain anonymous but told him they inherited the coin after their brother and mother bought it for $18,200 in 1978.
That would be about $90,000 in today’s money.
The parents, who operated a dairy farm, saw the currency as a financial safety net.
Adjusted for inflation, the coin’s value increased by approximately 455 percent in the more than 40 years it was in the family.
The 50th home run ball hit out of the park this year by All-Star MLB player Shohei Ohtani was worth $500,000, the same as the imperfect dime, when bidding for it began on September 27.
The ball has since sold for an astonishing $4.39 million after a staggering 40 bids.