1970 SMALL DATE

Donny

Sorry but my question was will someone please explain how to identify the 1970s small date as opposed to the large date? Which coin is it applicable to, the cent?

Eventually, I will get this right. I'm speaking of a 1970 Proof set. Man........

MAULUMALL

coppercoins

Hi Donny,

The coin to which you refer is the San Francisco minted cent for 1970. It's the most difficult of the different small/large date varieties to detect. I wrote a page for my site on this, hopefully it will come in handy for you...

1970S small/large date cents

Donny

Thanks C.D.!

wondercoin

Funny you should mention 1970(s) SMALL DATE Lincolns! Last night, I was with Bob Hughes from Spectrum and he was asking me about prices on modern coins (while I was picking his brain on pattern coins). 1970(s) Lincolns came up and he told me an amazing story. In 1970-1971, Bob was partners with Steve Deeds (who now runs Superior Auctions) and they heard that the Mint had struck some "special" small date Lincolns. According to Bob, they spent many months buying up every 1970(s) Lincoln bag of cents they could find and poured through them to pull out all the Small Dates they could find. In the end, Bob recalls cherry-picking around (8) to (10) bags of 1970(s) small dates (5000 coins per bag). 40,000 -50,000 Small Date cents, which they then sold for the amazing price of around $100/roll, paying no attention to quality of the pieces!!! I was mentioning to Bob last night that a hoard like those 50,000 small date Lincolns coins today might likely be worth MILLIONS OF DOLLARS!! Which brings up another question- WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO THESE BAGS? Bob was on the phone to Steve Deeds last night trying to find out!!

Wondercoin

cladking

I've never heard of a solid bag of '70 small dates. Interesting story. Such a large
number is staggering. Perhaps they are what held the price down through the mid-70's?

MAULUMALL

wondercoin
Great story.
Let us hear if he finds them.

Cam40

These are hard to make out if you look at just the date.

One good diagnostic I know of is the weakness in LIBERTY on the obverse.
None I believe show a bold Liberty.It always weak and mushy looking.

wondercoin

Cladking: According to Bob, the 8-10 bags were assembled from the mountains of 70(s) bags they purchased and then sold by the roll. They obviously sold quantities of these rolls in the early 1970's. Anyone out there remember these rolls being offered for sale? OREVILLE??

Consider that perhaps a five or ten thousand dollar investment in those freshly minted cents in 1970 (and a couple months work)would likely be worth multi-millions today. Is there that kind of opportunity in the market today? These dealers that sold off these small date cents were very talented numismatists, but Bob never considered even keeping a single cent or pulling the high grade examples at that time! What an incredible story.

Wondercoin

Cam40

It is.
There just may be a few little hordes of these out there somewhere.
What happens if a ton of them hit the market at once..

cladking

The opportunity still exists to cherry pick many coins including the 70-S sm dt cent.
'70 mint sets can be found unsearched and even still sealed in the original "bag".
These sometimes include exceptional coins since this coin does appear in ultra high
grade.

A few of the small dates (at least in sets) will have a well defined strike on all the let-
ters of LIBERTY. These will account for less than 2% of mint set coins. The few I've
seen are nothing special otherwise and would not go high grade.

nucklehead

Excellent website coppercoins, when I asked this very question many month ago on a set I'd won at a coin show I got some good answers from Tom B and a few others who know their stuff.The others were more worried about increasing their post counts then helping anyone out on what they at the time may have thought was a stupid question.Your website explains the difference in a way that even the Redbook misses.

cladking

The easiest way for me to spot the small date is in the lower loop of the 9.
On the large date it points down toward the mint mark and on the small
date it is nearly horizontal. Proof are similar but it's harder to see with
this marker on the proofs.

greghansen

Coppercoins...that web site is fantastic! You need to brag about it more...or let me do it for you. Most unappreciated coin related site on the whole world wide web!!!

Cam40

Its also sometimes called a high 7.The top of the 7 is in line with the top of the 0.
Thats a hard way to tell.

dakra

Right on my desk in front of me is the small date 1970-S. I was alright until I got down to the part about "Liberty", mine does not seem all too mushy and unfortunately the container that it has been in hasn't preserved it too well. It's a great site though and I have been there a few times.

-Dave

anoldgoat

On mine the E in liberty is week, the right horizontal of the T is almost half that of the left and the Y is short. The rest of liberty look OK. Just glacing at the date the 7 looks higher than th 0 but after staring at it it looks more level with the 0.
This is from memory. I'll go back and take a look at the 9.

bigtonydallas

The easiest I found is to take a large date and look at it once in awhile while searching. I cherried a 1970 Proof small date at a local coin shop a couple of years ago. I paid only a dollar as he thought it was the large date. I sent it off to ANACS and it cam back PF65CAM!

JY93

Coppercoins,

thanks for sharing, that is a great website. That small date is very confusing and you gave the most informative information about it that I've seen.

Thanks,
John