AboutMyCoinRoosevelt Dime Cheat Sheet
Notes
- Dimes dated 1964 and earlier are 90 per cent silver. From 1965 they are copper-nickel clad.
- Stand a dime on its edge: a clad one shows a copper stripe all the way round and a silver one does not.
- Philadelphia struck no letter on its dimes until 1980, and coins dated 1965 to 1967 carry no mint mark at all.
Condition
As always, condition matters when it comes to Roosevelt dimes. Roosevelt dimes with all of their features, or with nice original lustre, should be set aside.
Dates
Dates and mint marks to be on the look out for.
| Date | Mintage | Rank | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1996-W | 1,457,000 | Key date | Sold only in the 1996 mint set for the fiftieth anniversary, never released. |
| 1955 | 12,450,181 | Semi-key | |
| 1949-S | 13,510,000 | Semi-key | |
| 1955-D | 13,959,000 | Semi-key | |
| 1955-S | 18,510,000 | Better date | The last year San Francisco struck dimes for circulation. |
| 1950-S | 20,440,000 | Better date | |
| 1954-S | 22,860,000 | Better date | |
| 1949-D | 26,034,000 | Better date | |
| 1946-S | 27,900,000 | Better date | First year of the series. |
| 1949 | 30,940,000 | Better date | |
| 1958 | 31,910,000 | Better date | |
| 1947-S | 34,840,000 | Better date | |
| 1948-S | 35,520,000 | Better date |
Common Roosevelt Dime Errors
| Error | What settles it |
|---|---|
| 1982 with no P | A 1982 dime with no mint mark at all above the date. Every other Philadelphia dime from 1980 onwards carries a P.A grease-filled die weakens a P without removing it, so look for any outline, shadow or disturbed metal where the letter should be. A P taken off after striking leaves tooling marks and a flattened patch. |
| Off-centre strike | Part of the design is missing and a plain crescent of blank metal is left in its place. The struck part stays fully sharp right up to where it stops.A coin ground, filed or mangled by machinery after it left the mint loses detail gradually and leaves burred metal. A genuine off-centre strike has a clean, sharp boundary and an untouched blank beside it. |
| Clipped planchet | A smooth curved bite out of the rim, with the rim flattened or the design weak directly opposite it.A coin cut or snapped after striking has a rough edge and a burr. That weakness opposite the clip is the part that is hard to fake, so if the rest of the rim is perfectly normal, be sceptical. |
| Die crack or cud | A raised irregular line wandering across the flat field, or a raised blob of blank metal over the rim where a piece of the die broke away.Raised is the die; cut into the surface is damage. If a fingernail catches in it, it is a scratch. Worth very little unless the cud is large. |
| Repunched mint mark | The mint mark shows a second, offset outline of itself, both impressions rounded and equally raised.Machine doubling is far more common and looks flat, shelf-like and shiny along its doubled edge rather than rounded. If the second image reads as a smear rather than a second letter, it is machine doubling and is worth nothing. |
| Lamination flake | A thin layer of metal peeling away or already missing, in a flat irregular patch, caused by impurities in the strip the blank was cut from.Corrosion and environmental damage look similar and are very common on coins that sat in the ground or in a damp jar. A lamination has a clean step down to the layer beneath; corrosion is pitted and rough. |
Rare Roosevelt Dime Errors
| Error | What settles it |
|---|---|
| Proof with no S | A proof dime of 1968, 1970, 1975 or 1983 struck from a die on which the S was never punched. Proofs have mirror fields and frosted devices and come out of proof sets.Circulation dimes of those years carry no mint mark either, because Philadelphia used no P until 1980, and they are worth ten cents. The mirror field is the whole difference, and the 1975 is known from two coins. |