MEASURED · 12 OCTOBER 2026

How much is a dime worth? Which dimes are silver, and what each is worth

Every US dime dated 1964 or earlier is silver, and the silver in it is worth far more than 10 cents. Every dime dated 1965 or later is copper and nickel and worth 10 cents, apart from silver proofs made for collectors. Below: what the metal in each is worth, how to tell them apart in a minute, what the Mercury and Roosevelt dimes are, and what a dime costs to make.

The short answer

Silver at the London (LBMA) price of $60.865 an ounce on 29 September 2026. The September 2026 average was $64.60, which puts a silver dime at $4.67. Dimes dated before 1873 hold slightly different amounts of silver: $4.39 to $4.71 at the same price. Copper and nickel at the World Bank’s September 2026 averages: $14,474 and $16,324 a metric ton. Collector values are not measured here.

Which dimes are silver

Each dime is worth 10 cents as money whatever its metal. Silver figures are the silver alone; the copper in a silver dime is worth a fraction of a cent. A worn coin holds slightly less metal than a new one. Collector premiums are not included.

How to tell a silver dime in a minute

• Read the date. 1964 or earlier is silver. 1965 or later is not, unless the coin came from a Mint silver proof set.
• Look at the edge. A copper-nickel dime shows a copper stripe round its edge: the pure copper core between its two copper-nickel layers. A silver dime is silver-white all the way across the edge.
• Weigh it. A silver dime weighs 2.50 g, a copper-nickel one 2.268 g. A scale that reads to 0.01 g tells them apart.
• A 1965 that looks silver on both checks is worth a closer look. A 1965 dime weighing 2.50 g with no copper stripe may have been struck on a leftover silver blank. Have a grading service such as PCGS or NGC authenticate it before selling.

How much is a Mercury dime worth?

The “Mercury” dime is the design struck from late 1916 to 1945. It is 90% silver and weighs 2.500 g, so a common one is worth its silver: $4.40 at the 29 September 2026 London price. The name is a mistake that stuck. Adolph Weinman’s design shows a young Liberty in a winged cap, and writers took her for Mercury, the Roman messenger god; the coin’s proper name is the Winged Liberty Head dime, according to Wikipedia.

The scarce one is the 1916-D: the Denver Mint struck 264,000 of them, and it is the key date of the series. Dates like that, and coins in top condition, are collector coins first; a grading service’s price guide, such as PCGS or NGC, lists them. We did not measure collector values.

Roosevelt dimes, silver and not

The Roosevelt dime went into circulation on 30 January 1946, which would have been Franklin Roosevelt’s 64th birthday. The dime was chosen partly because he helped found the March of Dimes, according to Wikipedia. Roosevelt dimes dated 1946 to 1964 are 90% silver, worth $4.40 each. From 1965 they are copper and nickel, 3.32¢ of metal. A few later ones are collector coins: 1982 dimes struck at Philadelphia and released without the P mint mark, and proof dimes of 1970, 1975 and 1983 that lack the S mint mark.

When a dime’s silver passed 10 cents

A dime of 1873 to 1964 holds 0.0723 troy ounces of silver, so its silver is worth 10 cents when silver costs about $1.38 an ounce. That is the quarter’s break-even too: the Mint put the same silver in every dollar of face value, about 0.723 ounces in ten dimes, four quarters or two half dollars. So the dime passed its face on the same dates. The first month above was July 1967, when silver averaged $1.60 and a dime’s silver was worth 11.6¢. The last London fix below 10 cents was 3 January 1972, at $1.374: 9.93¢. It has been worth 10 cents or more on every one of the 13,826 London fixes since, and in 709 of the 801 months since January 1960. At the record fix of 29 January 2026, $118.45, a dime’s silver was worth $8.56. The month-by-month chart is on the silver quarter page; a dime’s silver is always 40% of a quarter’s.

Silver dime value, year by year

December averages, except the last row (September 2026 average). The World Bank reports silver to the nearest 10 cents, which matters most in the early rows. Copper-nickel dimes began in 1965.

What a dime costs to make

The Mint’s 2024 annual report put the cost of making and distributing one dime at 5.76¢ in fiscal 2024, as NBC reported. Over the same fiscal year, October 2023 to September 2024, the copper and nickel in a dime averaged 2.17¢ at World Bank prices, so everything other than the raw metal cost about 4¢. Copper’s rise since has taken the metal to 3.32¢ in September 2026, the highest monthly value since the copper-nickel dime began in 1965. Like the quarter, the dime still costs less than its face to make; the nickel does not.

Selling or melting silver dimes

The federal melting ban, 31 CFR 82.1, covers only five-cent and one-cent coins; dimes are not in it. Silver dimes are bought and sold for their silver and are usually quoted per dollar of face value. Ten dimes, $1 face, hold 0.723 troy ounces: $44.01 at the 29 September 2026 price. A $5 roll of 50 holds 3.615 ounces, $220.03, and it takes about 13.8 silver dimes to make a troy ounce. Worn coins hold a little less silver than new ones, so buyers often weigh or discount them.

Measured by US consumer prices, 10 cents in 1964 bought what $1.08 buys in August 2026. The silver in a 1964 dime has risen far faster: 44 times face.

The same arithmetic for the other coins is in how much is a penny worth?, how much is a nickel worth?, how much is a silver quarter worth?, how much is a half dollar worth?, how much is a silver dollar worth? (junk silver), Kennedy half dollar value and how much is a dollar coin worth?. This page is a measurement, not a forecast or personal advice.

How we measured it

Prices: World Bank Pink Sheet monthly averages for silver in US dollars a troy ounce and copper and nickel a metric ton, January 1960 to September 2026; the LBMA silver price to 29 September 2026; BLS CPI-U to August 2026. Metal content: silver dimes of 1873-1964 2.50 g at 90%, 0.0723 troy ounces of silver (NGC’s melt-value figure, also used on our silver-dollar page); earlier dimes weight times fineness: the 1792 Act’s 41 3/5 grains (2.70 g) at 89.24%, then 2.67 g at 90% from 1837 and 2.49 g from 1853 (Wikipedia); copper-nickel dimes 2.268 g (31 U.S.C. 5112) at 8.33% nickel and the rest copper. Face-value line: each month’s World Bank silver average times 0.0723, compared with 10 cents, with the 1971-1972 dip checked against the unrounded daily London fixes. Fiscal year: the Mint’s, October to September, the average of the twelve monthly values.

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