Mercury Dime Values & Mintages

Grading tips

Look at the hair above Liberty's forehead and the bands across the fasces. Fully split, rounded center bands ("Full Bands") bring large premiums.

Weinman's winning sketches

In 1915 the Mint Director began looking for new designs for the dime, quarter and half dollar, which had carried Charles Barber's Liberty head since 1892. The Commission of Fine Arts disliked Barber's own sketches, so three sculptors were invited to compete: Adolph A. Weinman, Hermon MacNeil and Albin Polasek. Weinman, a German-born sculptor who had worked as an assistant to Augustus Saint-Gaudens, won both the dime and the half dollar, while MacNeil's design went on the quarter.

The dime design was accepted in May 1916, but the first coins struck that summer upset makers of vending machines and pay telephones. Weinman lowered the relief and the revised dime entered circulation on October 30, 1916. Weinman never named his model. She is widely believed to have been Elsie Stevens, the wife of the poet Wallace Stevens; her daughter said so publicly in the 1960s.

Not Mercury at all

The official name is the Winged Liberty Head dime. Weinman put wings on Liberty's cap to stand for liberty of thought, but the public saw the Roman messenger god Mercury, who wears a winged hat. The nickname has stuck for more than a century.

The reverse has its own symbolism. The fasces, a bundle of rods bound around an ax, was an ancient Roman emblem of authority that Weinman used to suggest unity and strength, while the olive branch stands for peace. Its later association with Mussolini's Fascist party came after the coin was designed.

Full Bands and the grading of Mercury dimes

The fasces is tied by three sets of horizontal bands and the center set is the last part of the design to strike up fully. When those center bands are completely split and rounded, grading services add a Full Bands designation and collectors pay strong premiums for it. On many dates the difference between an ordinary uncirculated coin and a Full Bands example is far larger than the difference between two grades.

For worn coins, look at the hair above Liberty's forehead, the feathers on the wing and the diagonal bands on the fasces. A Very Fine coin still shows most of the wing feathers, while on a coin in Good the portrait is mostly flat and only the outline of the wing remains, though the date and lettering should still be readable.

The end of the series

President Franklin D. Roosevelt died in April 1945. He had founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, whose fundraising drive became known as the March of Dimes, so the dime was an obvious place to honor him. Because the Mercury design had been in use for more than 25 years, the Treasury could replace it without an act of Congress. The Roosevelt dime was released on January 30, 1946, his birthday. The 1945 coins became the last Mercury dimes. Counting proofs, more than 2.6 billion Mercury dimes were struck in 30 years.

Frequently asked questions