I got a couple of late date Mercs, 44 and 45, at an auction. The luster is very good but they seem to be either softly struck, or worn, especially around the forehead hair. I am fairly new at grading coins and sometimes have trouble distinguishing wear and soft strikes. Is soft strikes something common to Mercs? I haven't scanned them yet so no photos.
IDK about your coins, but one of the strongest strikes for mercuries I have is a 45 micro S coin. They made tons of these, so I imagine they were stretching die life some. That could explain your coins. Btw hopefully Lehigh or another winged liberty expert will post. This is just my experience, but of course I could be wrong.
The late years, especially 44 and 45 have some of the best strikes, in my opinion. Full Split Bands are very common in the late years. On that note, I am not a knowledgeable Mercury dime collector. I just know the later years in my collection all nice strikes. maybe i am just lucky. edit: Just wanted add: Starting in 1940 they struck a massive amount more than the rest of the series. So I would suspect there are also many struck with well worn dies. 1944 P had the highest with 231,410,000, then 1942 P with 205,450,000, 1943 P had 191,710,000 , and 1945 P with 159,130,000. Without doing the math, I bet the last 5 years had more mintage than the rest combined.
To tell you the truth I find some of the later years to have some of the strongest strikes. I was looking through a bunch of Mercs the other day and noticed all the high grade ones to be '43 to '45.
Actually my 1945 looks a lot like your '45. I don't know Mercs very well at all. I think that looks soft, especially around the hair. I am thinking that the size of the coin has a lot to do with the amount of detail that you can actually bring out of a coin. Beautiful coins by the way.
Here's a later-date merc that is full bands and not exactly a great strike. And here's one with a nice strike but dies that are starting to show their wear... And this is about as hammered as you'll find a later-date Merc... And another fully-struck Merc with the beginnings of die deterioration.. And just for the sake of contrast, here's a well-struck earlier date. In summation, it wasn't weak strikes that robbed most of the later-year Mercs of the hair details, it was simply master hub wear. Here's a 1916, first year of mintage... not a great stike, but still, you can see a lot more hair detail than the later years.
Nice Merc. Thanks for the insight. Unfortunately, I do not have nice examples of early Mercs to compare. This is my Au (maybe?) 1916-S. Not a terrible strike. Or is it?
I'd say that's an average to slightly weak strike. I'm having a lot of trouble locating a nice '16-S in a rattler or OGH, MS64FB. Only one I saw was for sale by Bozarth Numismatics and they wanted almost double guide, typical of them to ask way over guide for coins that aren't worth way over guide... irritates me to no end. I might have considered it if it was CAC'ed... anyways, sorry for the rant. Does that '16-S display luster breaks? I'm wondering, because it doesn't look AU from those images, it looks like a dipped and retoned non-fb coin... MS64-65 depending on luster. Here's a very well-struck '16. Images courtesy of HA... my coin though.
In short, the answer to your question is YES. Merc Crazy already gave the reason but David Lange explains it the best IMO. As a visual representation, here are some Merc photos posted chronologically.
