1990 Penny (no mint mark)

LukasA

I have a 1990 penny that doesn’t have an S and I read online that if a penny doesn’t have an S then it’s rare. Just wondering if the penny worth more than its face value.

FredWeinberg

Your cent is an uncirculated coin, struck for circulation.

The rare one is a PROOF without the S mintmark below the date.

Your coin is not a proof, and is worth face value only. It is not the
Proof version missing the S mintmark. Sorry.....

TurtleCat

Welcome to the forum. What you likely have is a standard 1990 cent minted in Philadelphia. In that year they did not put a mintmark in for Philadelphia on cents. This is something that gets confusing to people. Now, there is an extremely rare chance it's a proof coin that has no S when it should. When you can post a picture you can see but unless it looks exactly like the below it isn't:

Oldhoopster

Over 6.8 Billion (with a 1990 cents were minted in Philadelphia. All of these DO NOT have a mintmark.

As mentioned by others, the 1990 no S proof cent is the rare error. They have an unmistakable appearance (see the pic in the previous post) and it is very difficult to confuse them with the Philly coins struck for circulation. Also these errors were issued in proof sets, so it's incredibly unlikely that one would enter circulation (somebody would have to break open a proof set and spend the collectable coins at face value).

ricko

@LukasA .... Welcome aboard... As indicated above, you have the details necessary to understand that your coin is most likely worth one cent. It is rare to find proof coins in circulation... and would be extremely rare for this particular variety. Cheers, RickO

BOP

I was looking through my change and found a 1990 no S penny. Please let me know your thoughts.

gumby1234

@BOP said:
I was looking through my change and found a 1990 no S penny. Please let me know your thoughts.

Put it back in your pocket and spend it.

TomB

I commented to your other post about this coin.

You did not strike it rich. You did not find a no-S proof Lincoln cent. You did, however, find a coin worth one-cent.

Manifest_Destiny

ChrisH821

@BOP Your cent has no S because it was minted in Philadelphia along with the other 6.8 billion that they made that year.
The ONLY year that Philly minted cents got a mintmark was 2017, the rest are without mintmark and are also not proofs.

Murphey

The number of 1990 "No S" coins listed on eBay for a grand or more is simply astounding...Do people really think they are going to find a $5K coin in their change. That hasn't happened since 1955 when the DDO of all time was discovered in rolls at a bank in Northern Virginia.

MFeld

@Murphey said:
The number of 1990 "No S" coins listed on eBay for a grand or more is simply astounding...Do people really think they are going to find a $5K coin in their change. That hasn't happened since 1955 when the DDO of all time was discovered in rolls at a bank in Northern Virginia.

For the record, the vast majority of 1955 DDO cents aren’t worth $5000.
That aside, it sounds like you don’t know about 1969-S Doubled Die cents. Or did you know about them, but excluded them because they’re worth more than $5000?😉

sellitstore

@Murphey said:
The number of 1990 "No S" coins listed on eBay for a grand or more is simply astounding...Do people really think they are going to find a $5K coin in their change. That hasn't happened since 1955 when the DDO of all time was discovered in rolls at a bank in Northern Virginia.

I don't think that these were very valuable when first discovered but became more popular over the years after Dave Bowers promoted and sold many of them in the late 1950s and early 1960s. They still would have represented a nice windfall for any acquired at face value.