Collecting Barber Dimes

WHEN I started collecting coins in the mid 1950s, coins to fill contemporary sets could be acquired through change and roll searching, with an occasional purchase of a key date. At that time, dimes, quarters, and half dollars, which actually circulated, were 90 percent silver. Focusing on dimes, Mercury dimes were seen almost as often as Roosevelt dimes, which had been minted since 1946.

From time to time, Barber dimes showed up, although they were usually in well- circulated condition, which today would correspond to the grades of AG3 through G6. Of course, numbers with grades were phenomena that were many years in the future.

If you had the money to pursue higher denominations such as quarters and half dollars, the occasional Barber coin in these denominations would sometimes appear. As a junior collector, the Barber coins (dimes, quarters, and half dollars) were the oddballs; the strange items that would make my heart skip a beat. Don’t get me wrong, a key or semi key Lincoln cent, or even a 1950-D nickel, would certainly get my attention, but it was the silver Barbers that really excited me.

The days of interesting and fairly frequent circulation