Good Day. 1964 Set, No Mint Mark And As Described. SMS?

It would have if it was actually packaged, they weren't.

From my knowledge and understanding of the 1964 SMS coins, they were all found in an estate sale of a mint Director that had passed away and were all bought from that estate sale, and likely all graded at this point. You will never find a 1964 SMS coin in circulation, You will never find a complete set in OGP or pieced together in aftermarket packaging to be cherry picked anymore because they all got bought and graded and sold by various auction houses and still sell from time to time to change hands in those auction houses.

Theory is they were test strikes for the 65.66.67 SMS coins to see how they would turn out. Description of the first Stacks and Bowers auction was: "The [half dollar] has a fully satiny obverse and a somewhat reflective surface," "The strike on all the coins is far sharper than is seen even on the Special Mint Sets. We suspect that these were struck as an experiment to determine the sort of finish the Mint would use from 1965 through 1967."
The Lincoln Cent, Jefferson nickel, Roosevelt dime, and Washington quarter in that same set also exhibited the same surface characteristics as the 1964 SMS Kennedy half dollar.
The five coins were offered in a nondescript snap-tight plastic coin holder.
All sold a little here and there through the 1990s and 2000s so they don't compete with each other and bring down the sale prices.

Just about everywhere and on youtube the "coins you can find worth money!" story is nice and gets you thinking if you look you might hit the lotto, But coming across one coin somewhere that nobody knows about for cherry picking would be astronomical, and finding a whole set 1964 SMS to cherry pick would be about the same odds as the entire universe collapsing 5 seconds after you read this.

The 64 on the SMS half dollar has an aberration below the right most point of the 4 and are supposed to have a different finish.

It's really small, but I don't see it on yours.

It would be odd to find one as I believe most were purchased from an estate by a single collector.

I doubt if this picture is authentic. By virtually all accounts, the 64 SMS coins were test strikes. Because they were never intended to be released to the general public, there was no need to package them.

Also, the picture shows the hard plastic holder which was not introduced until the 1966 SMS releases (1965 SMS coins still used the earlier proof style flat pack). It would be an easy matter to open a 1966 plastic case and insert ordinary 1964 coins.

This is from the Coinweek article:

"Only 12 of the unofficial "Special Mint Sets"-assembled a year before the United States Mint began to sell Special Mint Sets officially to the public-are known to exist. Unlike the official consumer products issued a year later, the Special Strike 1964 sets were not put together in pliofilm packaging - though they do share the sharp detail and satiny surfaces in common with the later releases."

https://coinweek.com/auctions-news/...collections/

Petespockets55, that particular quote was from Coin Week. the article was about a 1964 SMS half that sold in a 1996 Long Beach Expo U.S. Signature Auction.
That article says about the earliest appearance of them in a sale was "June 1991 appearance of the 1964 SMS Kennedy half dollar, when an unusual five-piece set of 1964 Philadelphia-Mint coins was offered in a Stack's sale."
The article seems to suggest that was the very first offering of them on record about 2 years before it became more generally known to exist.


If you search that quote, I'm sure it will bring you to that article from coin week. it's an interestign read. I also don't know if there are 12 complete sets, but seems like for sure there are 12 half dollars, and all the rest of them after that on population reports ect from the grading companies are re-submissions hoping for a better grade or to change the slab over.

Thank you so much, everybody.