Coinbuf

If you are interested in U.S. coins, you should obtain a current (2024, 2025 edition likely to appear in a few months) or recent edition of A Guide Book of United States Coins, commonly known as the "Redbook". It is available online from its publisher at whitman.com. There you would find that the 1974 Lincoln cent (no mint mark, Philadelphia mint) had a mintage of over 4.2 billion pieces and the 1968-D (Denver mint) Roosevelt dime a mintage of nearly 481 million. They still circulate in the United States and have no value to collectors unless in uncirculated (new) condition and even then only if attractive with minimal blemishes. Both of your coins are worn and have no collector value.  (I assume that the "wheat ears" reverse is from a different cent, as that reverse was not used after 1958.)
   The non-U.S. coins also appear to be common modern issues with circulation wear. You can check their retail values on the NGC World Coin Price Guide at World Coin Price Guide and Values | NGC (ngccoin.com).

I'm sorry but you have received some bad information there are no missing letters on your 1974 US cent.  If you have read that a coin without a mint mark is rare that is completely false information.   The US mint produces coins at several locations.  The Philadelphia location has seldom used a mint mark.  So a coin without a mint mark simply means it was produced at the Philadelphia facility, it is not an error, and in poor condition like your coin is only worth 3 cents for the copper metal value in the coin.  Again it is unfortunate that you have received misinformation about these coins in the past, they are not rare or valuable.

please excuse. my spelling i will double check everything from now on. I would not mind winning an award as i have been working diligently for the past year but mostly i am doing it for myself I started by collecting the silver Kennedys and that led to the proofs. and now i want to move on to the MS a lot of them are pretty. spendy that's why I'm thinking 65 or better will be ok with me.

That really depends on what your goals are, if winning awards in the modern sets is your goal that is tough because even if you have all the boxes checked the best you can do most of the time is have a multiple way tie for the number one set.   While I did not check, I would guess that for a modern set like proof Kennedys you would need every slot to have a top pop (PF70UC or whatever is the highest grade for that slot) coin to have any chance of competing/winning.   But again, that is just a guess as I don't collect Kennedys, other than a couple for type set purposes.
If winning awards in not the focus and you are satisfied with the set as is, then you have the option of moving on to the MS coins and upgrading the proofs if or when you choose to.

Glad to see the procedure went well and Sam is up and doing normal kid activities including trick or treating.  

Thanks! Congrats on yours and good luck to you. We'll see if they're feeling like being nice to me this year.  The ones I feel like I have in the running this year are primarily the 61% complete Austral Set, trying to follow in the footsteps of the Zimbabwe and Venezuelan Sets, possibly with a Best Presented or Best New, and the 500 Lire set. I think if they were going to acknowledge the 10G set they would have done it by now, but I could be wrong.  
I think this year is going to bring 12, which is quite impressive for me given that I've averaged about 3 per year for the last 15 years. Almost half of that is just what I've been doing in the Modern Italian categories for my wife though.

Congrats on your BIC wins, best of luck on a major award again this year.    I will have less BIC wins this year than in past years, but a couple of new sets will have that award so that is nice.   Seems that my sets have a great deal of competition so I'll be hard pressed to stay out front for many next year.

Have you been seeing an increase in participation with your "backwater" sets? I have. It's not been a rapid increase, but the number of participants in pretty much all of my sets has double, tripled, or more in the past 1-2 years. In some sets there were maybe 2-4 of us now, 10-20+. An increase was not unexpected but I was a little surprised by the number of new sets. 
I've also noticed a sharp increase in the number of World coins in PCGS slabs, I'm not sure if this is due to perceived turnaround times, U.S. collectors getting priced out, sellers seeing an opportunity, etc.. As you can guess most have asking prices that are completely bonkers and are sitting there rotting. I guess I don't get why people think there is a premium for PCGS World coins, especially when they don't have a registry/sets to support most of these coins. 
Hmm, this coin sounds familiar and I'm not seeing the one I was looking at on ebay anymore.  You may have some additional competition in that type set my friend. 
Hoping all goes smoothly with Sam's upcoming in-patient, and that you're all out of there as quickly as possible. 

Short of them quietly sitting on some coins in the background I think I pretty much sniped them for this year by buying the only two coins available on eBay that had significant point values attached to them. Yeah. They could probably get several things on very short order and pull ahead of me, but I'd be surprised. If they decide to fight me for it I imagine it will be next year.  All in good fun though. I get to collect an extra scalp / certificate for Shandy this year.  
I am expecting and hoping for a fairly chill week in the hospital on an ICP monitor ending in an in-and-out shunt revision. I could be wrong, but I'm telling myself it will be RELATIVELY easy.

Nice. 

Nice. 

No not really anything on my radar, picking up a few Lincoln cents here and there to continue plugging holes in that set.   I would enjoy finishing some of the other sets I have started but the prices of US coins have really shot up and I'm getting priced out of the market.

Congrats!!

i edited the post above to have the picture of the six dates (7 coins) of Rhodesian Pennies together after Shandy and Ben handed them to me tonight. The set is now populated with a description that I wrote for it.
Set Details | NGC Registry | NGC (ngccoin.com)
I used Sam's nap time today to edit and crop down the images of the 2007-date Venezuelan coins and I've now posted those to replace the NGC images. I'm ratehr pleased with how these came out. I was worried about a few of them, looking just on the back of the camera when I took them two weeks ago on 10/07, but I'm very pleased with the final results. I'd taken multiples where needed and I got a good set of images out of it. I'd been worried I might have to try to shoot the 2021 coins in particular again but the pictures looked nicer than I'd remembered:

With that done, I think the action plan is:
1) Take and edit shots of the Rhodesian Pennies.
2) Make descriptions for the pennies using my journal about them from September as a base / starting point
3) Make a photoshopped banner image for the Rhodesian set.
Time allowing:
4) Make a Banner for the Venezuelan Set
5) As time allows, build out what I can for the Venezuelan Set.

I mean, if we're being honest, her laughing AT me is not an unusual event, but I also don't mind. She also rejoices in frequent but good-natured teasing and calling me a nerd.

Did Shandy get a laugh out of this?
Anytime I can cause my wife to laugh, even if it's at my expense, I feel like it's a win.

Great grade results, congrats!!

Good luck with this, I think a nice display for the 500L could help your cause. 

It is somewhat sad that NGC took out the ability to use PCGS coins in the registry, I think there was a better option that was not explored but certainly not the end of the world as some have expressed.  Both firms do a fine job and the differences between the two are much smaller than many plastic collectors would have you believe.  Imo NGC is more strict on surface marks and less in love with luster, while PCGS is absolutely in love with luster to the point in many cases that strong luster overrides some surface marks and/or soft strike.   I personally think that the move by both firms to market grading was a poor decision and one that has been an overall negative for the hobby going forward.  I would like it if both firms would just give me a grade that is biased on the coins strike, condition, and surfaces instead of what the graders think of a coins color or look, leave that to be decided by the buyer/seller.  One thing for sure I'm not one of those collectors that has blinders on and can only look at coins in a particular brand of plastic, I tend to think of that mentality as an investor not a collector.

I think I'd actually go for the first one in that group where she's smiling all happy to print and frame but I'll keep that in mind.
Yeah. Too bad it's a relatively short set. I may need to start getting creative with new placed to take it. But I think including the circulating commemorative years that aren't part of that registry set - 1993, 1996. 1997 - might be the first step when the time comes. But, for now, I still have some gaps to address.

Looks like you both had an awesome time and that is the best part of this journey you are now both on.

Congrats on your grades!!

Not a match for FS-101, not a DD of any kind. If you're referring to the area above and left of the "1" in the date as containing a "P", it doesn't/it's not. Probably a stain of some sort along with a plating blister. 

Where do you see doubling that leads you to believe that this is an example of FS-101? And where do you see a "P"?

I think your logic is sound, I prefer to think of it as a bad buy or a good buy, which again is very subjective and may not be the same for each collector.   As an example when I was younger I used to buy lots of "stuff", just random coins and proof/mint sets many of which were found on the old time bid boards at coin shops.  Not bad coins or even overpriced but the randomness of the buys lacked focus and now even today I still have many of those coins just laying around in boxes and bins with no home for them.   Even today I still fall victim to the "buy the shiny coin" syndrome every now and then no matter how much I try and stay disciplined.
However there are many collectors that enjoy collecting in this way and I'm sure that I have offended a few peeps over time with what may have been perceived as a flippant comment which I did not mean that way but came across that way.
Copper coins are tough to categorize due to the reactive nature of copper and the threshold each collector has for the different color designations.   A red coin to one may be thought of as red/brown to many others, and so on.   Tarnish on coins creates vast differences in reactions from each collector, it is what makes collecting both interesting and conversely difficult.