And I am back with a new coin for the collection. However, I am starting to slip up a little bit as I begin the process of slowing down and letting the dust settle. The reason being is that I don't want to end up going broke spending all of my money on coins.
But here is the 1917 Mercury Dime with no mint mark, meaning that it was minted in Philadelphia. This was purchased online.
The coin is made up of 90% silver and 10% copper which makes the value of the coin today worth what it is made of.
If I was going to be honest, this would not be the first time I have collected or owned a Mercury dime. I had actually found a Mercury dime in the garage of the family home when I was a teenager, it was in terrible condition and was minted in 1942. I put it in a coin folder for Mercury Dimes and it was the only one I had up until I was made to abandon it.
I knew that a few months ago that I would want to grab AT LEAST ONE Mercury Dime and hold on to it for the collection. At least now I don't have to give it up or abandon it if I don't want to!
I figured that I would get the very year of making these dimes and I found this one with relative ease. However, I am a bonehead!! Mercury dimes were minted starting from 1916, and not 1917, so this specimen is not one of the first of its kind but rather in its second year of being minted.
What I have learned about this coin is that the obverse has a portrait of a lady on it and she is wearing a winged Phrygian cap. But the public at large mistook it for the image of the Roman messenger god. And that is why they call it a Mercury dime. I am guessing that without that misidentification that it was to be called a "Liberty dime" but we'll never know.
The reverse has an image of a battle axe called "fasces" that is bound with wooden rods and an olive branch representing "Strength and Peace" which is a wild combination. I had never heard of fasces before. I must research that at a later time.
The U.S. Mint in Philadelphia alone minted 55,230,000 of these dimes from the grand total of 91,962,000 in 1917.
As I stated earlier, they began making these back in 1916 and the mintage in 1916 was a lot less than 1917, by a long shot. There are only 264,000 of the 1916-D versions of the dime, making it ultimately valuable and incredibly more difficult to just find and totally EXPENSIVE to buy. Although the U.S. Mints in San Francisco and Philadelphia each minted over tens of millions of them. Denver being the "near impossible" coin to collect or find. Therefore, my mistake MIGHT have saved me a lot of money.
Littleton Coin Company will sell it to you for about $2,300 USD while eBay sellers are bleeding customers out with prices ranging from $700 (being in the poorest conditions) all the way up to $50,000 USD.
But you have to be careful at what you are looking at, some of these specimens over on eBay are not the actual old currency but instead just collector pieces or tokens or coins which were enlarged to show detail, which aren't currency at all. Please beware of these sorts of scams online!!!
My apologies for being all over the place on this post. My thoughts are scattered this day, because of a few future posts that are coming and I am not exactly sure how to approach those stories. Be patient as those posts will be coming here soon.
Thank you for reading. Happy Collecting!!
But here is the 1917 Mercury Dime with no mint mark, meaning that it was minted in Philadelphia. This was purchased online.
The coin is made up of 90% silver and 10% copper which makes the value of the coin today worth what it is made of.
If I was going to be honest, this would not be the first time I have collected or owned a Mercury dime. I had actually found a Mercury dime in the garage of the family home when I was a teenager, it was in terrible condition and was minted in 1942. I put it in a coin folder for Mercury Dimes and it was the only one I had up until I was made to abandon it.
I knew that a few months ago that I would want to grab AT LEAST ONE Mercury Dime and hold on to it for the collection. At least now I don't have to give it up or abandon it if I don't want to!
I figured that I would get the very year of making these dimes and I found this one with relative ease. However, I am a bonehead!! Mercury dimes were minted starting from 1916, and not 1917, so this specimen is not one of the first of its kind but rather in its second year of being minted.
What I have learned about this coin is that the obverse has a portrait of a lady on it and she is wearing a winged Phrygian cap. But the public at large mistook it for the image of the Roman messenger god. And that is why they call it a Mercury dime. I am guessing that without that misidentification that it was to be called a "Liberty dime" but we'll never know.
The reverse has an image of a battle axe called "fasces" that is bound with wooden rods and an olive branch representing "Strength and Peace" which is a wild combination. I had never heard of fasces before. I must research that at a later time.
The U.S. Mint in Philadelphia alone minted 55,230,000 of these dimes from the grand total of 91,962,000 in 1917.
As I stated earlier, they began making these back in 1916 and the mintage in 1916 was a lot less than 1917, by a long shot. There are only 264,000 of the 1916-D versions of the dime, making it ultimately valuable and incredibly more difficult to just find and totally EXPENSIVE to buy. Although the U.S. Mints in San Francisco and Philadelphia each minted over tens of millions of them. Denver being the "near impossible" coin to collect or find. Therefore, my mistake MIGHT have saved me a lot of money.
Littleton Coin Company will sell it to you for about $2,300 USD while eBay sellers are bleeding customers out with prices ranging from $700 (being in the poorest conditions) all the way up to $50,000 USD.
But you have to be careful at what you are looking at, some of these specimens over on eBay are not the actual old currency but instead just collector pieces or tokens or coins which were enlarged to show detail, which aren't currency at all. Please beware of these sorts of scams online!!!
My apologies for being all over the place on this post. My thoughts are scattered this day, because of a few future posts that are coming and I am not exactly sure how to approach those stories. Be patient as those posts will be coming here soon.
Thank you for reading. Happy Collecting!!
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