The 1976 No S Eisenhower found in a register

CoinWeek (9 September 2026) gives a long note to the unique Eisenhower Proof 40% silver dollar with a Type 2 reverse and no S mintmark, dual date 1776-1976. The headline says a million dollars; the body is clear that no recent public sale sets that price. The coin is not in Notofilia’s virtual collection.

Three traits at once

A 1976 Eisenhower without a mintmark is not, by itself, rare: Philadelphia struck more than 117 million Bicentennial dollars for circulation, also with the Type 2 reverse, per PCGS as cited by CoinWeek. The rarity is the combination: a Proof strike, the Type 2 reverse (thinner, serifed lettering on UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and ONE DOLLAR), and a 40% silver planchet (~24.59 g, versus ~22.68 g for circulating copper-nickel). PCGS catalogues it as a Philadelphia issue (number 62402); CoinWeek stresses that no Mint record explains the strike, so the precise claim is one known, not “mintage of one.”

The Woodies register

The first owner, in the story that has followed the coin, found it in 1977 in a Woodward & Lothrop (“Woodies”) cash register in Washington, D.C. In 1978 Thomas K. DeLorey, then at Coin World, recorded 383.25 grains and specific gravity 9.55 and took it for a genuine, unaltered 40% silver dollar (Coin World, 7 June 1978). DeLorey, CoinWeek adds, never fully accepted the find story: a closer government origin remained possible.

The August 1974 Proof-like trials in Philadelphia, with Mary Brooks and the designers, lacked an S — Philadelphia did not then use a mintmark — but they carried the Type 1 reverse. The Mint, in PCGS research cited there, had those No S pieces returned and destroyed. The survivor is Type 2: the lettering revision Frank Gasparro asked of Dennis R. Williams in 1975. CoinWeek records hypotheses (a Gasparro trial in Philadelphia; a Brooks presentation piece) and leaves them undocumented.

Hammers and valuations

Commercial history CoinWeek cites: US$5,000 in 1982 (Devonshire, raw); later NGC PF65; Superior lot 1794 in 1997; then PCGS PR66 and, in 2002, Bowers and Merena lot 647 at US$41,400. PCGS now lists it as PR66CAM. In July 2025 PCGS called it worth nearly a million; it had carried US$850,000. Mike Byers (MintErrorNews) argues for seven figures. The more conservative Greysheet CPG retail lists US$720,000 in PR66. None of those figures is a 2025 or 2026 hammer. More detail in CoinWeek (opens in a new tab).