Mercury Dimes: History, Values, And A Few Dates: Bullion Shark.
In 1916 the dime, the quarter, and therefore the fifty-cent piece were every eligible for a brand new style, and therefore the Treasury Department command a contest to pick the winning motifs. styles submitted for the dime and therefore the fifty-cent piece by German-born sculptor Adolph A.
Weinman was elite. They became his most well-known legacy: the Winged Liberty or Mercury dime and therefore the Walking Liberty fifty-cent piece, though he additionally created several works of art, particularly giant monumental sculptures found around us.
Mercury Dime style
Weiman’s dime remains the foremost fashionable kind of its denomination and one amongst the foremost wide collected 20th-century series. Its obverse style options a left-facing profile of girl Liberty carrying a winged cap, that symbolized liberty of thought.
The looks are believed to be a composite portrait primarily based partly on a bust the creative person had manufactured from Elsie Kachel Stevens (wife of the author Wallace Stevens) and one amongst Weinman’s most famed monuments – the Union troopers and Sailors Memorial in the metropolis that has a sculpture of allegoric conclusion with a head and cap that powerfully gibe those on the coin.
1916 could be a key date for Mercury dimes
This style was directly fashionable numismatists however was before long mistaken by several as being a picture of the Roman god Mercury, a divinity of trade and commerce. that it couldn't be, since all U.S. coins at the time were needed to feature an outline of Miss Liberty on their obverse.
The confusion arose in giant half as a result of the winged cap appearance kind of like the petasos worn in ancient Greece, as well as by the god Hermes, Mercury’s Greek counterpart. however, the Mercury name stuck, tho' most numismatists value more highly to decision it the Winged Liberty or Liberty Head dime.
The reverse style depicts an allegory, that is associate axetke tied to a bundle of rods, encircled by the associate offer. The allegory had its origins in Italian and Greek civilization and was later carried by Roman bodyguards as a logo of power and authority. it had been co-opted by the Italian dictator Il Duce as a logo of political orientation.
But Weinman’s allegory was meant as a logo of unity, as he explained during a 1916 letter to the editor of The coin collector. He was supplementary that the battleaxe stood for the state to defend the Union, whereas the branch of olive symbolized our country’s love of peace.