The Mercury Dime is also known as the Winged Liberty Head Dime.  It depicts the head in profile of Lady Liberty wearing a winged cap.  It became known as the Mercury dime because of its resemblence to the messenger god, Mercury, in spite of the fact that supposedly representing freedom of thought. The design was created by Adolph A. Weinman, a first time designer who went on to later design other coins for the mint.  The Mercury Dime was minted from 1916 to 1945 at the Philadelphia, Denver, and San Francisco Mints. The reverse depicted an ancient Roman fasces, a symbol of authority and an olive branch, a symbol of peace.

The introduction of the Mercury Dime was a part of a total overhaul of the design on the United State’s coinage.  Starting in 1909 with the introduction of the Lincoln Cent, and in 1913 with the Buffalo Head Nickel, the next in line were the Barber coins, the dime, quarter and half-dollar.  The Coinage Act of 1890 restricted the changing of design in the United State’s coinage to every twenty-five years.  The Barber coins, which had been in circulation since 1892, weren’t allowed to be phased out as early as the cent and nickel.

In 1915, the United States Mint, under Director Robert W. Woolley asked for design submissions from three known artists, Adolph A Weinman, Albin Polasek and Herman A. MacNeil.  The job, at the time, was to redesign all three of the silver coins, not just the dime. Traditionally, the designs for coins had come from professional designers employed by the mint.  Chief engraver Charles Barber, for example, had supplied designs for the previous six design changes. Director Woolley decided that since Barber was advanced in his years, 75 years old at the time, that commissioning the jobs to outside artists would bring some refreshing new faces to the mint’s coinage.

Weinman was a native of Germany and immigrated with his family to the US at the age of 10 in 1880. He was a student of well known sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, another noted designer of United States coinage.  In 1915 Weinman was well known as one of the nation’s best sculptors, and two of his designs were chosen by the Mint, including the dime and the half-dollar (which would later be known as the Walking Liberty Half Dollar).  Herman MacNeil design for the quarter was the other winner, and is commonly known as the Standing Liberty Quarter.

Weinman used the poet Wallace Steven’s wife Elsie Stevens as his model for the dime.  They had rented rooms in a building owned by Weinman.  It was also where he kept his studio, on West 21st Street in New York. Mrs. Stevens was 27 years old at the time, and obvious feminine features on the coin such as her curly hair and face suggest lady liberty instead of the masculine god Mercury.  The winged cap symbolizes freedom of thought. The fasces on the reverse is an ancient symbol of authority.  The axe represents preparedness and the olive branch suggests peace.

The initial production of the dime didn’t progress as smoothly as hoped.  After significant delays, the dime went into production nearer the end of the year than planned.  At Philadephia and San Francisco, Barber dimes were still being minted to meet the commercial demand for the coin.  The 1916-D issue of only 264,000 coins is highly sought after, due largely to the fact that the overwhelming majority of the dimes struck at Denver in 1916 carried the pre-existing Barber design. Thus, the 1916-D is worth up to thousands of dollars if it is in relatively fine condition.

The Mercury Dime was minted for the next twenty-nine years.  With President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death in 1945, a successful movement got underway to commemorate him by placing his likeness on a circulating coin.  The dime, being the first choice as the cent was already occupied by Lincoln, the nickel by Jefferson, and the quarter by Washington.  The only other choice would have been the half-dollar, which changed to depict Benjamin Franklin just a few short years later.