Despite the popularity of the Barber dime, it was replaced in 1916 with the Mercury Dime, a misnomer. The likeness on the obverse is not that of Mercury, a male god, but that of Liberty, the same figure that had been used since the beginning of mintage in the U.S. The problem arose from the fact that in this new portrait, small wings were added to Liberty’s headdress and these were widely misinterpreted. Equally confusing was the reverse object, a vertical bundle of sticks with an axe protruding, flanked on the left by branches. The designer, Adolph Weinman, extracted the image from ancient Rome, where an imperial procession was often accompanied by bearers of such bundles, which served as symbols during the day and were lighted for illumination at night.

With two exceptions, the Mercury Dime is available today at a very reasonable price. One of them is a 1942 overstrike, which is worth $200 to $300 even in well-worn condition and the other is the rare Denver mintage of 1916. That year being the first year of production, the Denver mint was slow to get started and only produced about 260,000 of the coins. This issue is worth $1000 to many thousands of dollars and unfortunately is often counterfeited.

This is the reverse of the coin at left. It is unfortunate that both of these coins were minted in 1942 but the reason is simple: Only one year that these dimes were made were there more of them produced. In 1944, more than 231 million, while in 1942 the quantity was only a bit more than 205,000,000.