My 1916-D Mercury dime. Genuine or altered D??
rec78
Posts: 5,822 ✭✭✭✭✭
Hello, I bought this 16-D many years ago (about 50). I have been suspicious that this may have been an altered "D" or embossed "D" since I bought it. The closed "D" is my concern. Please state your opinion on this coin. All opinions welcome. Thanks! Bob.
1
Comments
Genuine 1916-D dimes have a reverse that is rotated slightly clockwise with respect to the Winged Liberty obverse. No rotation observed means the piece is not authentic, no matter the 'D'.
Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.
It looks OK to me.
Mark Feld* of Heritage Auctions*Unless otherwise noted, my posts here represent my personal opinions.
Check for the rotated reverse, as mr1931S said. Every one I've ever owned showed this effect.
ThankS! I never know that. It does have the rotation. I am convinced now that it is genuine! Thanks all!
Looks good. Genuine AG3 or G4 details.
You're welcome. A couple of years ago I showed a well-worn '16-D dime to a local dealer and asked him if he thought my piece was genuine. He had an answer for me in less than 30 seconds. "Genuine,",he said. I asked him how he knew so quickly that my '16-D was genuine. "It's the rotation," said he.
Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.
Well, no. The die register is posted ATS and it indicates that FOUR pairs were used on the single day of striking.
ANA 50 year/Life Member (now "Emeritus")
Did you know about this tip for identifying genuine '16-D dime before reading my post?
I'm happy that the OP saw the rotated reverse on his piece thanks to the information I'm sharing. He send his coin in for authentication it most likely will be deemed authentic. Four pairs to make a mere 264,000 coins? Maybe more than one obverse die used with a single rotated reverse die at the Denver mint in 1916?
Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.
I should add that 'D' looks good.
Serifs on a real deal 'D' easy to see thanks to fantastic images of the subject coin.
Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.
Looks ok to me
Nope. There are 4 noted positions for the D mintmark, 2 of which are RPMs. It’s definitive that 4 separate reverse dies were used.
Nope, 4 die pairs.
What is known is the days the dies were received, the days they were condemned, and the # of coins struck per pair.
The first pair minted 129,000 coins, the others less (56k, 54k and 28,447).
Finding the information and reading it is left as an exercise.
And now on to other items...
The die isn't rotated, it's round. It's the setup. Whether the setup was incorrectly oriented from the start of a given day or whether it loosened in use isn't known. Which days the dies were used isn't known.
Thus something less than or equal to the max struck by a single die pair exhibits the rotation. There could be different rotations from different setups.
You can't say a 1916D without the rotation isn't genuine.
ANA 50 year/Life Member (now "Emeritus")
okay. Show us an authentic '16-D where the reverse is not rotated clockwise a bit (about 30º, clockwise) with respect to the obverse and I'll be happy to back off on what I'm saying. I encourage the OP to send his '16-D to PCGS for authentication. Then, after being slabbed as genuine by our host post TruView images of the piece here.
Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.
"FOUR pairs were used on the single day of striking."
"Which days the dies were used isn't known."
Were all '16-D dimes struck in one day or were they struck on multiple days?
Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.
No, I misread the image. The dies were received on a single day in September or October. They were retired on three days at the end of December, having struck the number of coins reported.
According to Roger, that's all the die record book shows, not the daily striking records, nor the number of presses used. Those would be in different records which may not still exist.
ANA 50 year/Life Member (now "Emeritus")
Looks ok to me wear on the "D" is consistent with the wear on the coin.. I do not see any glue residue or weirdo discoloration around the D...
![](https://us.v-cdn.net/6027503/uploads/editor/fi/ptf41lvlj1hw.png ""
Here's a pic of the rotation.
Pete
Here's the page from the Denver Mint's die record book that Roger B. was talking about.
Based upon my research into the records of the 1922-D cent dies from the same book, I am sure that these four die pairs were struck on four different coin presses. Why the mintages were so different I have no idea.
By the way, these mintage figures tend to be approximates rounded off to the nearest 1,000, except for the last die pair of the month which got credited with all of the odd numbers recorded for all the presses. Also, these are gross numbers of strikes, and include coins later pulled from the production because they were error strikes or off-weight coins or whatever.
Note the five pairs of dies received on September 2 and never used, and later returned to the Philadelphia Mint. Roger says these were from the first batch of dies made of the new design, which proved to be a problem when Philadelphia ran off about a million test strikes and found that they exhibited excess "finning" or wire rimes. This caused problems with their use in pay telephones and presumably vending machines, so new die tools had to be made. The dies sent to Denver and San Francisco were returned unused and destroyed. See Roger's "Renaissance of American Coins, 1916-1921" for details.
Note also that after the first 1916-D Mercury Dime dies were recalled, Denver received 1916-D Barber Dime dies just in case it needed to strike Dimes for an order while the Mercury Dime die tools were being revised. THey were never used.
Interesting thread.
My immediate thought was genuine based on shape, orientation and placement, and general "fabric", but I don't think I've heard anyone talk about the rotated reverse in ... 35 years. I guess over time I forgot and chalked it up to a myth.
“We are only their care-takers,” he posed, “if we take good care of them, then centuries from now they may still be here … ”
Todd - BHNC #242
I while back I took some notes about the die rotations for the 4 different reverse dies, one is shifted slightly counterclockwise, the other 3 clockwise.
Below is a Heritage sort on 1916 D. I only glanced through the first page (25) and below is what I found. All might be within tolerance (last one maybe). There were at least a couple of each but the CW of varying degrees I saw the most of. I did nothing to try and determine which of these are the same or different dies.
Heritage link for sort:
https://coins.ha.com/c/search/results.zx?si=2&dept=1909&archive_state=5327&sold_status=1526~1524&coin_category=2078&us_coin_year=~~1916t1916&mint_mark=2031&mode=archive&page=25~1&ic4=Refine-MintMark-102615
Very Slight CCW
Aligned
Very Slight CW
A little more CW
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yq4KA0mUnC8 - Dream On (Aerosmith cover) via Morgan James & Postmodern Jukebox
https://youtube.com/watch?v=m3lF2qEA2cw - Creep (Radiohead cover) via Haley Reinhart & Postmodern Jukebox
RLJ 1958 - 2023
This could be a problem. I did a Heritage sort on 1916 (P). I only looked at the first two on the list. Below is the second one - a 1916 with a similar CW rotation.
Link to Heritage sort:
https://coins.ha.com/c/search/results.zx?si=2&dept=1909&archive_state=5327&sold_status=1526~1524&coin_category=2078&us_coin_year=~~1916t1916&mint_mark=3277&mode=archive&page=25~1&ic4=Refine-MintMark-102615
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yq4KA0mUnC8 - Dream On (Aerosmith cover) via Morgan James & Postmodern Jukebox
https://youtube.com/watch?v=m3lF2qEA2cw - Creep (Radiohead cover) via Haley Reinhart & Postmodern Jukebox
RLJ 1958 - 2023
Coin looks like it has tooling marks around the D. Could just be wear though. I'm not sure. Looks like a nice coin nonetheless.
I have a theory that the reverses were all fine but that the obverses were mid-set in the press because of the position of the date in the new design. Traditionally the date was at 6 o’clock, (until the St. Gaudens $20), but on first the Buffalo nickel and then the Mercury dime the date was moved sideways a bit. I suspect that the die setters put the dates at 6 o’clock out of habit, thus rotating the obverse die in a consistent manner.
Not everyone has that
"When they can't find anything wrong with you, they create it!"
Damn - you were just asking for others to show off their mercs...............
"When they can't find anything wrong with you, they create it!"
"Most every" genuine 1916-D has the rotation would be a better way of saying it.
Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.
Have you ever seen an authentic 1916-D dime without the rotated reverse?
Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.
To be perfectly honest with you, back when I was authenticating I never looked at the die rotation on 1916-D Dimes. They were easy enough to do from the mint mark shape and position. And you tipped it up a bit to look at where the mint mark met the field just in case somebody added the right shape mint mark in one of the right positions. (Which never happened.)
If I worked at a TPG as authenticator seeing no CW reverse rotation on '16-D would definitely get my attention. Then I look at mintmark and go from there. There are some great '16-D fakes out there.
Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.
Oh GOD! Soon he's gonna be telling us he has a 1909-S VDB!!!!!!!!!!
"When they can't find anything wrong with you, they create it!"
Looks like a match for reverse die #1
https://reader.exacteditions.com/issues/44201/page/95 .... props to Sandon ATS for sharing the link to the story in The Numismatist from February 1997.
ANA 50 year/Life Member (now "Emeritus")
Kind of a sorry contribution here Steven59. We all know you can do better than this.
Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.