Nickels and dimes
Mercury dime value: is my dime a key date?
Type the date and pick the letter on the back, left of the bundle of rods: the tool gives the number struck at that mint and the silver value.
Mercury dime: mintage and silver by year
Metal value of one 1921 coin
$3.91
| Struck at this mint | 1,080,000 |
| Mintage band | Low mintage (1 to 5 million) |
| Metal | 90% silver dime |
| Mint mark on the coin | D |
Pieces made in the calendar year; for most years this is also the date on the coin. At silver $53.94 per troy oz (last price read).
A Mercury dime is always worth at least its silver: 2.50 grams at 90% silver, 0.0723 troy ounce, about $3.91 at the price read on October 27, 2026. The design, officially the Winged Liberty Head, was struck from 1916 to 1945 at Philadelphia, Denver and San Francisco, and the output of each mint varied enormously. The Bureau of the Mint tables show 264,000 dimes struck at Denver in 1916, the lowest figure of the series, against 231,410,000 at Philadelphia in 1944. The 1921 dates are next, with 1,230,000 at Philadelphia and 1,080,000 at Denver. The mint mark sits on the back, at the bottom left of the fasces, the bundle of rods. Read the date and mark, enter them above, and the tool tells you whether your dime belongs to one of these small issues or to the hundreds of millions struck during the war.
Lowest-mintage dimes
Lowest mintage 1916 to 1945
1916-D: 264,000
| 1921-D | 1,080,000 |
| 1921 | 1,230,000 |
| 1931-D | 1,260,000 |
Number struck, from the Bureau of the Mint tables; San Francisco proof-heavy years 1965 to 1980 are left out. A low mintage is a lead, not a price: survival and condition decide what a collector pays.
Mintages, metals and prices read by Radif Partners · Editorial policy · Method
A silver dime struck for thirty years
The Winged Liberty Head dime replaced the Barber dime in 1916 and was itself replaced by the Roosevelt dime in 1946, as the Mint’s history of circulating coins recounts. Throughout, its alloy stayed at 90% silver and 10% copper, its weight at 2.50 grams, according to the Bureau of the Mint tables. That makes the metal value identical for every date: $3.91 at $53.94 an ounce. Only the date, the mint and the condition separate one Mercury dime from another.
Number struck at each mint, year by year
The table below reads the figures for every year of the design. Note that 1916 counts Barber and Mercury dimes struck that year together, because the Bureau of the Mint counted pieces by calendar year, and that a few years have no figure for one mint because it struck no dimes then.
| Year | Philadelphia | Denver | San Francisco |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1916 | 40,670,000 | 264,000 | 16,270,000 |
| 1917 | 55,230,000 | 9,402,000 | 27,330,000 |
| 1918 | 26,680,000 | 22,674,800 | 19,300,000 |
| 1919 | 35,740,000 | 9,939,000 | 8,850,000 |
| 1920 | 59,030,000 | 19,171,000 | 13,820,000 |
| 1921 | 1,230,000 | 1,080,000 | – |
| 1923 | 50,130,000 | – | 6,440,000 |
| 1924 | 24,010,000 | 6,810,000 | 7,120,000 |
| 1925 | 25,610,000 | 5,117,000 | 5,850,000 |
| 1926 | 32,160,000 | 6,828,000 | 1,520,000 |
| 1927 | 28,080,000 | 4,812,000 | 4,770,000 |
| 1928 | 19,480,000 | 4,161,000 | 7,400,000 |
| 1929 | 25,970,000 | 5,034,000 | 4,730,000 |
| 1930 | 6,770,000 | – | 1,843,000 |
| 1931 | 3,150,000 | 1,260,000 | 1,800,000 |
| 1934 | 24,080,000 | 6,772,000 | – |
| 1935 | 58,830,000 | 10,477,000 | 15,840,000 |
| 1936 | 87,504,130 | 16,132,000 | 9,210,000 |
| 1937 | 56,865,756 | 14,146,000 | 9,740,000 |
| 1938 | 22,198,728 | 5,537,000 | 8,090,000 |
| 1939 | 67,749,321 | 24,394,000 | 10,540,000 |
| 1940 | 65,361,827 | 21,198,000 | 21,560,000 |
| 1941 | 175,106,557 | 45,634,000 | 43,090,000 |
| 1942 | 205,432,329 | 60,740,000 | 49,300,000 |
| 1943 | 191,710,000 | 71,949,000 | 60,400,000 |
| 1944 | 231,410,000 | 62,224,000 | 49,490,000 |
| 1945 | 159,130,000 | 40,245,000 | 41,920,000 |
Several small issues stand out from the table: the Denver dimes of 1916, both 1921 dates, the 1926-S and the 1931 dates. The tool below ranks the lowest figures over any range you choose, which is handy when you hold a few dozen Mercury dimes and want to know which ones to look at first.
Lowest-mintage dimes
Lowest mintage 1916 to 1945
1916-D: 264,000
| 1921-D | 1,080,000 |
| 1921 | 1,230,000 |
| 1931-D | 1,260,000 |
Number struck, from the Bureau of the Mint tables; San Francisco proof-heavy years 1965 to 1980 are left out. A low mintage is a lead, not a price: survival and condition decide what a collector pays.
Condition and the bands on the back
For a common date, a worn Mercury dime is a silver coin and little more. For a well preserved coin, collectors look at the horizontal bands that tie the bundle of rods on the back. When they are sharply struck and split, collectors call the coin full bands, a detail that only appears on coins struck with fresh dies and never worn. Judging that needs a magnifier and good light, and the grading guide explains how wear is read on the high points of a coin.
This site does not publish collector prices: no official or freely licensed source gives them. What it does give is the number struck, the band it belongs to and the silver value, which together tell you whether a coin deserves an expert opinion.
Sorting a group of Mercury dimes
- Read the date on the front, behind the neck of Liberty.
- Look for the mint letter on the back, at the left of the base of the rods, as the Mint’s page on mint marks explains.
- Put aside any 1916-D, 1921 or 1921-D, and any coin the tool places in a low band.
- Count the rest by face value: ten dimes hold 0.7234 troy ounce of silver, as the junk silver page shows.
Silver prices come from gold-api.com as the page loads. For the dimes that followed, see the Roosevelt dime page, and for a straight silver count, the silver dime page.