Satin Finish!

Think sandblasted, or matte finish. The die is etched leaving the appearance that it has been sandblasted. Itried to take pictures, but it is difficult to get pictures that really capture the difference. I also wonder if the business strikes are just worn satin dies, as my business strike 2009 Lincoln cents appear to have a slight satin finish to them as well. As the die wears, you start to lose the satin finish, and it smooths out and shines more like regular strike coins. Hope I didn't add confusion.

Ok. So almost a grainy look?

I have never seen a 1964 SMS, so can't say what they would look like. I have many 1965, 1966 and 1967 SMS coins.
I would put them somewhere between business strike and proof.

The 1964 and back to 1936, coins have a mirror finish,
early die strikes for proofs can be cameo.

Here is one of my 1964 proofs

SMS coins are just deliberately well-struck Business Strikes, and shouldn't really be expected to have a Satin finish. Although used in specific fashion for specific issues, a "satin" finish is a look best exemplified by GR58's 1998 SP70 Matte Proof above. In the real world, those two terms describe the same look. You want to see the normal cartwheel of luster, but in a more even and subdued fashion. See how his coin shows a nice even luster all over? That nice regularity to the surface is a good pickup.

GR, that's such a nice matte kennedy I think we need to change your handle to GR98...

I know that I have 20 different 2009 Lincoln cents because I want to have an example of each type. So, yes, I collect them as different coins. In hand, it is apparent which is which but in pictures it wasn't as obvious. At least not the ones I tried to take last night.

I went to a pretty large coin show on Friday and Saturday. Among other things, I was focusing on Sacagawea dollars, Presidential dollars, State Quarters and ATB Quarters. I previously decided that I would collect the '05 to '10 satin coins as well as the regular business strikes from the same years. For year prior to '05 and after '10, I decided that I'd just collect either the brilliant or business strikes (whichever looked better). My logic is that you can tell a difference between a mint set satin coin and a nice business strike, but it's very difficult to differentiate between a mint set brilliant finish coin and a nice business strike.

I looked through a large number of coins in cardboard 2x2's. What I found for the '05 to '10 coins was that dealers were selling a mixture of coins from mint sets and from rolls. For some of the coins from rolls it was obvious that they were business strikes because they had a large amount of luster and had a borderline proof like appearance. However, others looked more like late die state satin coins. So, what I decided to do is only buy '05 to '10 coins if they had that high luster proof like appearance. This way when I hold them in their air-tite holders, it's easy to tell which is which. I also only bought coins where it was difficult to find bag marks, if any. After hours of looking, I only ended up with about fifteen coins between all four series. It seems that the small dollars are much more prone to bag marks than the quarters.