Starting in 1916, the US Mint began production on their Winged Liberty Dime, better known as the Mercury Dime. Many people, obviously, noted the similarities between the image of Lady Liberty on this coin to the ancient Roman god Mercury. This would have to be in my top ten favorite coins minted by the US. They were minted between 1916 and 1945 when the mint opted to create a new dime bearing the image of former president Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had just passed away.
For the most part, these aren't terribly expensive, often going only for silver smelt value (they were 10% copper/90% silver) and only a handful of them fetch decent prices. These include the 1921 and 1921-D, the 1931-D and a few varieties of errors such as the 1942 with a 1 underneath the 2. But the rarest of them all would be the 1916-D which had a small production of a quarter-million. Those sell regularly in the $750 - $1,250 range for the poorest grades, with better grades fetching in excess of $5,000 and mint conditioned types going for well over $10,000.
