This Low Mintage Dime Could Be Worth A Ton Of Money

From 1916 to 1945, the U.S. Mint produced the Mercury dime at the Denver, Philadelphia, and San Francisco locations. The image on the front featured the head-and-neck profile of Liberty personified wearing a cap with wings. This cap inspired the nickname "Mercury" because a Roman god with that name is often depicted wearing a similar headpiece. Altogether, mints in the United States struck nearly 2.7 billion Mercury dimes in a combination of 77 different dates and mint marks. The number of coins produced per mint, per year varied widely: some years saw only a couple hundred thousand, while others yielded hundreds of millions. According to Coin Mintages, in 1922, 1932, and 1933, none were produced at all. These days, coins from lower mintage years can be more valuable — and one in particular is in high demand with collectors.

The dime in question was struck by the Denver Mint in 1916. That year, the location struck an exceptionally low 264,000 Mercury dimes, most of which were well used by consumers once circulated. So, why were so few made? Shortly after beginning production on Mercury dimes that year, the factory received instructions to switch its focus to minting quarters and half dollars. So, the Denver Mint stopped making dimes until 1917, when it struck 9.4 million.

To put how rare the 1916-D Mercury dime is in perspective, the average number of Mercury dimes produced in a single mint in one year was 34,760,050. During the largest mintage of this coin — which was struck in 1944 in Philadelphia – 231,410,000 dimes were produced. That's nearly 1,000 times more than the 264,000 produced in Denver in 1916. It's for that reason that, if someone finds a 1916-D Mercury dime in excellent condition, the coin site Bullion Shark values it at up to $20,000. In September 2025, the NGC Price Guide listed a circulated 1916-D's value between $850 and $12,650 and set an uncirculated one's worth at potentially $39,000. On August 12, 2010, Heritage Auctions sold one in MS67 condition — which means it was a sharply struck uncirculated coin with few imperfections — for an incredible $195,500.

Now, you may have heard of the rare dime missing a special mark that sold for over $500,000, but that wasn't a Mercury dime. In fact, millions of Mercury dimes don't have a mint mark at all. That's because the Philadelphia Mint, which now puts a "P" on the coins it makes, intentionally didn't include a mint mark on its coins for the first 150 years after it was built. The "P" did appear on a number of coins during World War II, but it wasn't until 1980 that it began regularly showing up on Philadelphia-made coins.

Old dimes generally have more value than new ones, which is largely due to the material used to make them. Nowadays, it costs the mint 5 cents to make a dime, so its intrinsic value is actually less than the coin's face value. But with dimes produced before 1965, even a junk coin could be worth a lot more money than its face value. That's because it's made out of 90% silver and 10% copper. 

All Mercury dimes, along with any pre-1965 Roosevelt dimes, are made of this silver-copper alloy. Each dime weighs 2.5 grams, which converts to 0.088 of a troy ounce. Multiply that by 90%, and the coin contains 0.0723 of a troy ounce of silver. If you then multiply that figure by the number of silver dimes you possess, you'll have an idea of how much silver you have on hand. To know how much that amount is worth in dollars, you'll need to check silver's current value. APMEX lists it around $42 per ounce as of mid-September 2025, but that can fluctuate by the day. If you decide to sell your dimes to a place that buys bulk silver, this provides a benchmark of what to expect in compensation. But be warned: Anyone buying silver will probably not pay the full amount, and it's not uncommon to receive around half of market value for the silver you're selling.