Roosevelt Dime

History

Franklin D. Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, during his fourth term, and Treasury officials responded to the public mourning by proposing his portrait for a circulating coin. The dime was the logical denomination because of Roosevelt's connection to the March of Dimes, the polio charity he helped organize in 1938 after his own diagnosis in 1921, and the new design displaced the Mercury dime that had been in production since 1916. John R. Sinnock, Chief Engraver of the Mint from 1925 to 1947, handled the work in house rather than through a competition; he had been sculpting Roosevelt since 1936 for a presidential medal and had also designed the third inaugural medal. The federal Commission of Fine Arts rejected his first submission, but Mint Director Nellie Tayloe Ross refused to reopen the design because the coin had to reach circulation by January 30, the president's birthday and the opening of the 1946 March of Dimes campaign, so Sinnock revised the model instead. The dime was released on that date, and production has continued without interruption ever since.

Details

Sinnock is credited on both faces of the coin. From 1946 through 1964 the dime was struck in 90 percent silver and 10 percent copper at a weight of 2.50 grams; the Coinage Act of 1965 ended silver production, and dimes made since then use copper-nickel outer layers bonded to a pure copper core, weighing 2.268 grams. Diameter is about 17.9 mm and the edge is reeded with 118 reeds. Philadelphia, Denver, San Francisco and West Point have all struck the type, with West Point contributing the 1996-W, an approximately 1.5 million piece 50th anniversary issue distributed only inside that year's Uncirculated Mint Sets.

Features

The obverse carries a left-facing bust of Roosevelt with LIBERTY placed to the left of the portrait rather than arched above it, a departure from the Mercury dime's layout, and IN GOD WE TRUST below at the left. The date sits at the lower right, with Sinnock's small JS initials below the truncation of the neck. On the reverse an upright torch for liberty stands at center, flanked by an olive branch for peace and an oak branch for strength, with E PLURIBUS UNUM running across the field in a single line and UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and ONE DIME completing the legends. Mint mark placement gives the quickest dating cue: on the lower reverse to the left of the torch from 1946 through 1964, absent entirely from 1965 through 1967, and on the obverse above the date since 1968, with Philadelphia adding a P only from 1980. In 2000 the obverse was revised to reduce deterioration of design details near the rims.

Notable facts

• The JS initials prompted a Cold War rumor that they stood for Joseph Stalin, which the government answered through press releases identifying Sinnock as the designer.
• Sculptor Selma Burke won a 1943 Commission of Fine Arts competition for a bronze bas-relief of Roosevelt unveiled in September 1945, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Roosevelt's son credit her work as the source of the coin's profile, while PCGS points to a 1956 New York Times obituary crediting photographer Marcel Sternberger with the portrait Sinnock used.
• PCGS assigns a Full Bands designation to well struck examples and tracks them under separate certification numbers from ordinary coins of the same date.
• The blank mint marks of 1965 through 1967 were a deliberate anti-hoarding measure adopted under the Coinage Act of 1965.
• The 1996-W was the first dime ever to carry a West Point mint mark.
• A 1946-S graded MS68 Full Bands realized $5,819 at auction on February 1, 2007.