I acquired over 100 Mercury Dimes from an old man whom had been collecting for years. As I started going through them I noticed a few of them didn't look right. The weight of this one is 2.52 gr. and my metal detector reads it as being silver but I'm still hung on the font of the date. What do you guys think?
Look at the words "IN GOD WE TRUST". The shape of the letters are wrong. Same with the look of the date. I think it''s fake.
Sure did, acid test and with metal detector on analyzer setting. Whoever made this thing was pretty good at it seeing the old man had them since the 70's.
If it's an altered Mercury dime, which it could be, then the silver test would pass. The "16" in the date looks really suspect. Others have already mentioned the blobby "W." The "D" on the back also doesn't look quite right. Though I'm no expert, it's definitely not something that I would purchase. Something seems off. That and the fact that the 1916-D is a heavily counterfeited coin makes something inside me scream "no!!!!"
BTW, if there is any chance at all that it's genuine you do NOT want to be destroying the coin to run an acid test.
I think the the most probable date is 1940. The 1 looks too far away from the 9, so the... "triangle part" of the 4 on the left, and the little tail on the right were probably shaved off. Then, the top right section of the "0" was shaved off and the loop of a 6 was added. Everything else looks fine to me. Well, everything except "cod". Maybe that was a joke, or maybe it was grease filled. But pictures are pretty blurry, so I might be missing something.
The 1 and 6 in the date are too spaced out. The loop in the 6 also appears to connect to the stem, unlike the genuine date. Probably a 40s merc, it would have been easier to carve a 1 out of a 4.
The "D" on an authentic 1916 D Mercury is at a slight slant and the inside is shaped like a triangle. The one in your photo is straight and the space inside the "D" doesn't look right .
