Mercury Dimes (1916-1945)

Your Guide to Mercury Dimes

If you have a pocketful of change, then you might want to look to see if you have any old Mercury dimes. You can also quickly start a whole numismatic collection of Mercury dimes by searching on eBay. You may want to concentrate on creating a Mercury dime collection featuring one from each year.

The United States Mint made Mercury dimes from 1916 to 1945, but when collectors look for Mercury dimes for sale, they often look for specific years from certain mints, including:

• 1916-D: Minted in Denver, these are the oldest Mercury dimes. There were only 264,000 dimes minted before the country's need for quarters stopped production.
• 1921: While employees at the mint in Philadelphia created these coins, these dimes bear no mint marking. Since only 1,230,000 pieces, which was very low at the time, were minted, these dimes are hard to find.
• 1921-D: The Mercury dime minted at Denver is also hard to locate because the mint had to stop making them to mint quarters.
• 1923-D and 1930-D: Despite how they were marked, these counterfeit Mercury dimes were minted in the Soviet Union as the country was desperate for American cash.

Some error Mercury dimes were minted. The most famous of these is the 1941/42 coin. These dimes were created in late 1941 when it was necessary to use two dies to mint coins. Employees made these with a 1941 die on one side and a 1942 die on the other. Look closely at the date, and you can see where the one is covered up by a two. These coins also look like they have two fours in the year.

Yes. When workers at San Francisco Mint made some 1945 dimes, they used a puncheon, which designers initially created for use on Filipino coins minted in San Francisco. The result is that the mint mark is much smaller than usual. The mint mark is also the wrong size on 1928-S, 1934-D, and 1941-S Mercury dimes, but these mistakes only serve to increase their value now.

Yes. The United States Treasury released them in 2016 on the coin's 100th anniversary. The mint mark on these dimes is a "W," standing for West Point. They contain 0.1000 Troy ounces of gold, and these coins with a reed edge measure the same size as a regular dime.