5 Questions and Answers about Collecting Mercury Dimes

There’s a reason that collectors—even beginning numismatists—go after the satisfying goal of sourcing and owning an iconic Mercury Dime set—it’s fairly easy to complete. The cost can range from about $2,500 up to nearly $850,000, depending on your budget, your goals and the grades you choose.

Q. Why should you consider building a set of Mercury dimes?

A. It’s exciting and can be profitable too. Many collections of rare coin sets have sold as a whole for more than the total value of the individual coins.

Q. How do you build a set?

A. Coin investors typically follow one of two sets: “type” and “series.” A type set is comprised of all of those coins sharing a single specific characteristic such as a design, designer or denomination. A series include one coin from each date and mint of a particular type.

Other coin collecting strategies include collecting by mint mark, by individual year, or first and last year of the issue of a coin.

Q. What is the Mercury Dime?

A. The Winged Liberty Head Dime, popularly known as the “Mercury” Dime was struck from 1916 until 1945. Renowned sculptor Adolph A. Weinman designed this highly sought after coin. Even during its years of production, collectors clamored to own these coins for their collections.

As a coin group, Mercury dimes aren’t rare. A whopping 2.5 billion were struck from 1916 through 1945. Mercury dimes were last struck in 1945, when a new dime was created to feature Franklin D. Roosevelt, following his passing.

During the depths of the Great Depression, no dimes were struck from 1932-1933. Today, rare coin collectors classify Mercury Dimes into “early dates” (1916-1931) and “late dates” (1934-1945) categories. Nearly all late dates are common and can be easily acquired.

The Mercury dime is struck with 90 percent silver and 10 percent copper and the coin contains just over .072 troy ounces of silver.

Q. Why do we call it the Mercury dime?

A. Early on, the public was a bit confused about the obverse design. Lady Liberty is wearing a winged helmet which led to comparisons between her and  the Roman god, Mercury. Because of this, the moniker “Mercury Dime” stuck.

This cap was intended to represent the “Liberty of Thought.”  Weinman’s monogram,  “AW”,  sits on the right of the Liberty’s neck. The reverse features an intriguing design: a fasces depicting unity and strength, and an olive branch symbolizing peace.

The metal content is 90% silver and 10% copper. The mints include Philadelphia, Denver and San Francisco.

Q. What are some of the interesting and hard to find Mercury dimes?

A. Within the Mercury Dime series, there are only a few absolute rarities and there is only one that is hard to find.

The 1916-D is the scarcest major key date and rarity within the Mercury Dime series. Only 264,000 were struck. You may be wondering why the 1916-D Mercury Dimes had such a low mintage of only 264,000. Good question! Production of this coin was halted after the U.S. Treasury department entered an urgent order late in the year for 4 million quarter dollars.

Advanced collectors strive to acquire a 1916-D Mercury dimes for their collections in part to its low mintage and also because of their unique status as first ‘year-of-issue’ type coins. Some type collectors only acquire first-year coins.

Other Mercury dime key dates include 1921 and 1921-D and 1942-1 and 1942 -1D. The latter key dates show “overdates” with the number “2” struck over the number “1.”

Another interesting “error” coins involved a 1943 Mercury dime. The 1943 Lincoln penny struck over a struck 1943 Mercury dime is a remarkable and rare double denomination error coin and is one collectors avidly seek. How did this happen? This error coin was created when a dime was mistakenly fed into a printing press coining cents. This highly sought after error coin combines the three-pronged popularity of the Lincoln cent, the Mercury dime and its 1943 date, caused by the desirability of the famous 1943 copper cents.

If you are interested in building a Mercury dime set or are looking for that one hard to find coin to complete your set—call Blanchard today—we’re here to help.

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