How To Tell Special Mint Set Singles From Uncirculated Coins

Good question Wheezydog. I've found some very nice 65's through 67's searching through rolls. I;ve saved them because they are silver but it would be nice to know if there a way to tell them apart.

SMS nickles are silver?

Actually, I have most of my interest in the nickel, and I have found some very nice 1965 - 1967 nickels on the loose that I just can't say for sure. Yes the halves are 40% silver in the SMS as well as those minted and shipped out for use in circulation.
A lot of SMS coins were broken and cut out of the original packaging and sold as singles, so I find it difficult to tell which are which. Quite often I go by what the dealer has on the 2x2 and the rest on the appearance of the coin to say to myself, I can go along with that, but what are the telltale ways to be sure.

I guess it would be impossible to tell the difference between a perfect made for circulation coin and a perfect coin taken from a mint set.

Having said that, I would say it would come down to condition, examined at high magnification. Freshly minted for circulation coins would have nicks in them, the mint set coins should not.

With Australian coins, the circulation coins are just spat out of the minting presses into a pile, and they all have bag marks, as you would get with coins jingled together in bags, when they are delivered from the Mint to banks.

The coins made for mint sets are extracted individually from the presses, and are packaged, and so should not have bag marks. Each coin is individually handled, with the objective to avoid any damage to the coins.

I suspect that coins made for circulation and coins made for mint sets are made from the same quality dies except, perhaps, the circulation dies have more coins struck from them.

I obtained this information from the tables at Numismedia.
This would best illustrate that there is clearly a way to determine one coin from another by some difference in the striking or the dies or the blanks used. I don't know what they are but clearly there is a difference in values from this online guide.

So my question still stands, while the comments are appreciated, nobody has exactly nailed a way these can be determined to be either one or the other from examination outside of the original packaging.

FMV Prices (MS61-MS70) 1967 SMS Jefferson Nickel

MS60 - $0.22

MS61 - $0.24

MS62 - $0.29

MS63 - $1.20

MS64 - $4.80

MS65 - $12.50

MS66 - $22.50

MS67 - $31.25

MS68 - $262.50

MS69 - ?

MS70 - ?

FMV Prices (MS61-MS70) 1967 Jefferson Nickel

MS60 - $0.22

MS61 - $0.24

MS62 - $0.29

MS63 - $0.36

MS64 - $6.00

MS65 - $17.50

MS66 - $250.00

MS67 - ?

MS68 - ?

MS69 - ?

MS70 - ?

Condor101, I do tend to believe you very well might be right. I cannot tell the difference. Unless the dies for SMS coins were exclusively used for SMS coins only, then we won't know, but unless there is a small polish mark or odd shaped serif or the like on a SMS coin and the die that struck it, then they must have used the same dies to make both kinds.
I guess the only difference, might be some of the more careful handling SMS coins were supposed to receive.
There may be some room then for some interesting slab cracking and re-certifications with these coins by some people.
Take your MS66 or MS67 SMS nickel and send it in and hope it comes back as the same grade but without the SMS designation and you have a heck of a registry coin don't ya? Not to mention, a chance for a nice profit to the right buyer.
There would really be no shady business in hoping for such a twist of fate if they are basically the same coins.

I know this is an old thread, but I just wanted to share some insight that I just came across. It seems that in the mint sets back in the sixties they literally just plucked random coins and stuck them in sealed envelopes LOL so there is no difference just the way they look and are graded.

I believe everyone who collects post-'64 US coins is aware that the mint set coins are far and away superior to regular production runs. While the mint never admitted they took special pains and special care with these, they certainly did. The coins were made with brand new dies under higher pressure and at lower speeds allowing the design time to strike up. They also washed and dried these coins before being put in the packaging that would eventually destroy most of them.

The mint didn't admit that mint set coins were "special" in any way until finally in 1997 they included the reality in the promotional literature. But by this time it was pretty obvious since they had been making large numbers of PL's and burnished planchet strikes since 1985.

Anyone collecting the clad would have quickly seen that roll coins were almost always inferior to mint set coins and it mattered little because almost no rolls existed then and fewer exist now.

I think the reason people don't realize just how bad circulations strikes typically are is simply they never looked and those who did often saw rolls of mint set coins and didn't realize they were from mint sets.

Look at the worn quarters in circulation. Even after these are worn down to VG condition most of them still show signs of weak strikes from worn dies.

Almost all mint set coins are nice solid strikes. They may otherwise be pretty ugly but they are good strikes from good dies.