Mercury Dimes Semi Key Date Inquiry

I would also include the 1931 d. It has a lower mintage than the 1926 s but goes for conciderably less. The set is fairly easy in lower grades besides the 1916 d. Higher grades for your list can set you back.

Here's what I think, the Mercury dime has always been a very popular coin to collect because of the beautiful design. The complete set can still be put together in fine or very fine, the 1916-d being far and away the most expensive can be purchased in ag or g condition just to fill the hole, although you still will have to spend a few hundred or so for it. The 1926-s is the coin I always hear as being the sleeper, however there are several others in the set which have mintages under 2 million which should do well over time as people continue to put sets together.

I don't know if 1926-S is a sleeper, given that everybody acknowledges it's a hard one. I think the real sleepers are all the rest of the branch mint dimes from the teens and '20s in VF-AU. You see a price of $50 or something in a price list, and you kinda get the impression that 50 bucks will let you go out and get one and fill that hole. It turns out that you need 50 bucks and a lot of patience. An reasonably priced, acceptable example of, e.g. 1924-D doesn't just show up at at your local coin shop every day. Most of the ones on ebay are grossly overgraded, overpriced or have been harshly cleaned. All the nice ones are tied up in collections because everybody loves them.

Even though I've been making an effort to focus on these hard dates first and just leaving the easier Philly dates for "whenever", all the P holes in my book are filling up and the branch mints are going much slower.

Again, my experience comes from trying to put together an XF set. A lot of these are reasonably plentiful in G or VG.

Also, in the second half of the set, which are all considered common, I think 1934-D, 1935-D and 1939-S are sleepers (relatively speaking.)

I think right now is a great time to buy, especially in the lower grades. I'm having a hard time with the whole sleeper thing. Though I understand it completely. It is just that I am too the point right now where I am about to stop pulling the 31d's from the scarp bag, as I have a dozen of them already. In the last year I have pulled about half a dozen 31s' and similar quantities of 25d's and 26's. And honestly I have pulled so many 1917d's that I have stopped unless they are in vf or better. What I am having trouble finding in any grade are 1927d's. I have 2. I have even pulled 3 21p's and a 21d from the scrap bag in the last year. Strangely when people bring in large quantities of 90 percent, it is almost in the form of dimes, and better than 70 percent of them are Mercs. I have often wondered if it has anything to do with the city I live in having been a Hub for the B&O rail road. 7 major lines came through this town. We even had a turn table which is now in Baltimore Md at a Museum. I wonder how many people got off the trains and stretched their legs and bought a dime coke, hot dog, or whatnot. Also a dime was the fair for the inter urban rail as well. I realize it could just be a geographical thing and what is common for me could be ultra rare for others, ala 1917d.

This is why I think 1916-D is overpriced in G-4 and lower. There are always acceptable, certified examples in those grades on ebay. They're always available. Yet they're priced higher than a 1926-S in XF. It's no question that the '26-S is harder to find in XF than a '16-D in AG-3.

I have a saved search that has the 10 toughest dates I'm missing which I update as I acquire coins. It's only once every few weeks that I see one in that list worth bidding on, and the BIN at an acceptable price are just as uncommon.

Is it just me or do there seem to be certain sellers on ebay that take silver polish and rub the heck out of every Merc they get? Sometimes I think more coins are being ruined by sellers than by scrap dealers.

I don't mind a nice quick dip on a coin I'm buying as long as it was not rubbed or polished. But I have seen way too many xf details, or better, coins that have had a wire brush taken to them. It just galls me! I had a customer offer me an 1928 S Merc with split bands.... and wire brush marks. He offered to sell it to me for $200 dollars; telling me it was a steal. Because he had seen on the internet where that was a $500 coin.

I said, "Well it was before you took the brush to it. Now its a $20 dollar coin". He left in a huff came back 3 days later and asked if I would still give him the $20. He said he had gone to every B and M shop in the phonebook ( do they still print those?) and nobody would give him more than melt. And he wanted to know why.

So I explained it like this. If you had a nice original,but dirty, 1963 Corvette would you clean it with a Wire brush? How you would you feel trying to see out the window past the brush marks? How would you feel as the potential buyer of such a car? The difference being that you can restore the car, but not the Coin.

To the original point of the post. Something undervalued currently with upside potential. I think 1927,8 and 9; D and S, in XF or better. Though I admit the BIN prices on ebay are higher than the RedBook right now. However; I usually only look at auctions or recently posted BIN. I suspect the majority of BINs don't sell. Mine never did. I also find that a lot of B and M shops and Antique shops/malls only focus on the 16d and 21(s), maybe the 31d. I know one scrapper that has taken in Albums of Mercs and all he pulls are the "big 4". Everything else goes in the melting pot. And to be fair when I started to seriously collect Mercs a year ago; all I ever heard about were the "big 4". Everything else was considered common.

I kinda wish the Mercs would have as big a following as some of the other series. There are so many fascinating varieties and condition rarities.

IF it makes you feel any better Mac, I pull every FSB I find in the scrap bags. Also any BU's. Lol, though I am beginning to think the 43D is the 1881S(Morgan) of the Mercury series.But now that you mention it, I find more 38's than 39's in BU. I'm also have problem with the 40 S, now that I think of it.