Unfamiliar Coin | Denver Uncirculated Set Mint Medal

These medals (if that's what they're called), struck on cent planchets, came with some D (and P) uncirculated mint sets and were packaged in the cellophane wrappers with them. Someone has broken up a mint set and released this thing into circulation. Someone here should be able to tell you what years they came with mint sets.

Yep, it's a "mint set medal", sometimes called a "mint set token". Google either of those phrases for lots of examples.

The cellophane wrappers the mint sets come in have six slots, for the cent, 5 cent, dime, quarter, half and dollar. In years where no dollar coin was issued , one of these "mint set medals" filled the sixth space.

I'm not sure of the exact chronology, but I think it runs something like this: Earlier sets from the 1960s and 1970s had a plastic medal; sets from the early 1980s had medals struck on 1 cent blanks but with a simpler design without the Treasury crest; sets from the late 1980s and 1990s had ones like yours.

Go to ebay and you can find people selling them by the bucketload, often still in their wrappers; when people (especially dealers) cut up mint sets to get at the coins, the medals get "left behind".

There is no meaningful collector base for these tokens. They can often be found in dealer junk boxes for next to nothing. I've also seen dealers throw piles of them out after cutting up mint sets.

Don't know for sure but , I would say that people do put them out in change, Like some do with the copper coins form some other countries. We get a lot of the Bahama pennies around here and Mexican coinage in change. As far as value goes around this area they are marked .25 and in the half off box. Mint sets are one of the biggest rip offs in the history of coin collecting, Like with stamps most are only worth face value.
case in point My parents bought 5 sets from each mint every year since the mid seventies when there grand children were born, one for each of them and one set for me. That is a lot of money wasted. since when they stopped buying them it was in the higher $60.00 they would spend. Dealer buy at a reduced rate for their profit and most are worth more as the separate coins. Some brought only a couple dollars as sets but had cost $12 plus new from the mint.