1923-D Silver Mercury “Soviet” Dime

from an older thread on this topic.

and an image from somewhere else on the interwebs.

 

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From another post:


“This coin is one of the most famous American counterfeits, a coin which appears several times a year in various places to plague collectors, and usually disappoints its owner after he spends time and effort only to learn that it is a counterfeit.

This piece is not a cast or an electrotype, but is struck from dies. The lettering is thinner and not as well formed as on the originals.

This coin falls into the interesting category of counterfeits in which the counterfeiters were not numismatists, and created coins which had no official counterparts.

Two of the most prominent figures in the study of United States coins at that time were Don Taxay and Walter Breen. At the time of the Coin World study, they staffed the Institute of Numismatic Authenticators, a now forgotten commercial venture which was the pioneer in this field. Under the banner of the INA, Breen and Taxay prepared the following joint determination:

The 1923-D dime is nothing more or less than a struck counterfeit, made from skillfully hand-cut dies at some unknown time and place, but thought to have been possibly of Soviet Russia origin like numerous other modern silver struck counterfeits.

The variations found in the 1923-D dime which enable it to be positively identified as not from dies produced from Philadelphia Mint hubs follow.

The two experts went on to detail the characteristics of a genuine Mercury dime and specified how the corresponding features of the counterfeit 1923-D differed. They then amplified their comments:

After 1916, dime dies were fully hubbed, any differences (other than placement and possible size of Mint marks) being microscopic or nearly so, and originating in clashing, minor shifting, or (as in the case of the overdate) unintentional use of two different hubs on the same working die.

Differences in letter placement or shape can be excluded by knowledge of the minting processes then in use, and their presence on a suspected coin is confirmatory of its non-Mint origin.

When this situation is combined with the presence on the coin of a date-mint mark combination not known to exist on genuine dimes, as in 1923-D and 1930-D, evidence of non- Mint (counterfeit) origin, already conclusive, becomes blatant.

In their summation, Breen and Taxay addressed the background of these counterfeits:

The 1923-D dimes have only been reported since World War II, and all are similarly worn... an extremely suspicious circumstance even for coins reported from circulation, as they have more than the normal amount of wear for dimes of the 1920's. [Author's comments: In fact, they were less worn than most genuine dimes of those years. They were also known as early as 1940, but this fact had been forgotten by 1963.]

In conclusion, the combination of excellent die work and an egregious blunder (of a non-existent date-mint mark combination) points to a foreign origin, very likely the Soviet Union, which has a known record of counterfeiting U. S. silver coins during World War II.”

 

Thanks for all your responses. For those of you unaware of the "Soviet Dime", here is a great write up on this infamous counterfeit:

https://www.coincommunity.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=121928

It is indeed a numismatic curiosity, and if I can sell it as such, I'd rather do that than keep it because I don't collect these things and I'd rather just purchase bullion of legitimate US Coins for my collection.

 

I received this reply in another thread, I'll need to look at my red book.

 

think ya meant "1916-d) the 14-d is lincoln cent semi key

 

No he meant 14-D, he was talking about adding a D to a 1914 cent (note he mentions removing the D from a random cent). And yes some fake 14 D's have been made that way.

 

I remember reading about this 'coin' in the 1960's.

And I faintly remember finding one back then.

And, nope, no idea what happened to it.

 

oh, ok, i know they did this to the 16-d merc's too, only ever bought one an 1g-3 with a photograph for security from anaccs back when i was 11 or 12, i bought it at the show, had to call him from the pay phone to ok the puirchase, it was an insurmountable sum for me at the time to just purchase if he did not want it, 165.00, lol at that time the total of all coins in my showcase and books probably was like 4,000.00 total, lol

 

I think the "D" stands for Dan Carr!