I'm not clear how one can tell the coin was minted in San Francisco. If it was, I can tell you there was monkey business going on at that mint in the 70s. While living in the city I used to go to the Butterfield's auctions of abandoned bank box contents. One lot, around 1995 I recall, was a big bag of the most unbelievable mint errors imaginable - many S mint proofs double struck, off center etc. - all S mint and dated from the same period in the 70s. Clearly someone had been taking things out of the mint and squirreling them away in a bank box, which for obvious reasons was abandoned eventually. I didn't bid on the lot since I thought it would be expensive and invite government inquiry. I don't know whether it sold or what it sold for. But I can tell you that was the most unbelievable hoard of US mint errors ever.

I distinctly recall touring Europe in 1966 and visiting many museum numismatic collections. The East Berlin museum had a GOLD George Washington Manly original medal on exhibit. The national Copenhagen Museum had a centuries old numismatic collection which included a Gem Unc Noe 1 Oak Tree shilling fully round, a Gem Proof early 1820s quarter, a fully Unc 1795 dollar, etc all of which I held in my hand and had really old pedigrees. That was the summer I discovered the extremely lax security and extensive switching of Sir Joseph Banks Family American rarities like a Gem Unc 1792 half disme donated in 1800 according to its round paper ticket. Still, curiously, they still had two Higley Axes on top of each other and two uncirculated George Clinton cents on top of each other so one can presume the thieves didn't know colonial rarities.

My dad was a retail florist in Albany New York and before the great silver dollar run in the mid-1960's he used to get orders for silver dollar trees to be used as gifts for silver wedding anniversaries. He would get 25 silver dollars from a local bank, mount a driftwood tree on a wooden base, carefully wrap each dollar in a small plastic bag and hang the dollars using green floral wire from the tree branches. He made a number of these silver dollar trees in the early 1960's.