1894-S Barber Dime
Key dateOne of the most famous rarities in American numismatics. San Francisco struck twenty-four dimes in 1894 and no one has ever established why; the usual accounts involve balancing the mint's books or a superintendent making gifts, and none is documented. Only a handful survive.
Mintage
- Business strikes
- 24
- Mint
- San Francisco (S)
- Mintage rank
- 1 of 75
Rank 1 is the lowest business-strike mintage in the series. Mintage is what the Mint produced, not what survives. These circulated as money for decades, and enormous numbers of pre-1965 silver coins were melted once the metal rose above face value, none of it recorded by date.
Reading the figure
It is the smallest of the 25 San Francisco issues in the series. Of the 2,050,024 struck across all mints in 1894, this issue accounts for under 1%. Philadelphia struck more than a hundred times as many that year. The 1894 split ran Philadelphia 1,330,000, New Orleans 720,000 and San Francisco 24. The series median is 3,420,000, so fewer than half as many of these were struck as a typical date. Series-wide output fell that year: 2,050,024 against 7,591,401 in 1893. 1894 was the smallest production year of the entire series.
Every sentence above is computed from the mintage table on this page, not asserted separately.
About this figure
Sources disagree on what these twenty-four pieces were. One published table places the figure in its business-strike column and another in its proof column, and the grading services have certified examples in both categories. The figure is reported here as struck, without asserting which it was.
Scarcity tier
Key date
Assigned from reported mintage alone: under 750,000 is a key date, under 2,500,000 is a semi-key.
This is a reproducible label derived from the mintage column, not a market valuation and not a Coin Curator price opinion. The same thresholds apply to every series on this site. Several dates are far harder or far easier to obtain than their mintage implies; where that is true, it is stated above.
What to check before buying
Specific to the 1894-S:
- 1Any coin offered as an 1894-S dime warrants extraordinary evidence and documented provenance; a few dozen fakes exist for every genuine piece, usually altered from an 1894-O or a common S-mint dime.
- 2Given how few exist and how well recorded they are, an example without a known history should be treated as a fake until proven otherwise.
And for any certified coin
Verify the certification number on the grading service’s own lookup rather than from a photograph of the label, match the listing images to the certification record including grade and any variety attribution, look for cleaning, compare the mintmark against published photographs of the genuine issue, and read the return policy before buying. The grading guide covers each of these in full.
Coin Curator does not grade, authenticate, or appraise coins, and publishes no price or population data. These are verification steps, not a valuation.
Verify a certification number
Look a 1894-Scertification number up on the service’s own site. A photograph of a label proves nothing.
Each service publishes its own guarantee with conditions and exclusions. Compare PCGS, NGC and ANACS.
Find a 1894-S for sale
Opens an eBay search for this exact date and mint. Coin Curator does not list inventory, hold stock, or quote prices; verify each listing, seller, and return policy directly.
Affiliate link: Coin Curator may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Disclosure.
Common questions
How many 1894-S Barber dimes were minted?
The San Francisco Mint struck 24 1894-S Barber dimes for circulation. That is the 1st lowest business-strike mintage of the 75 date and mintmark combinations in the series.
Is the 1894-S Barber dime a key date?
Coin Curator labels it a key date, assigned from reported mintage alone: under 750,000 struck is a key date and under 2,500,000 is a semi-key. The same thresholds are used for every series on this site, so the tiers are comparable between them. That label describes production, not market value or how hard the coin is to find today. One of the most famous rarities in American numismatics. San Francisco struck twenty-four dimes in 1894 and no one has ever established why; the usual accounts involve balancing the mint's books or a superintendent making gifts, and none is documented. Only a handful survive.
What should I check before buying an 1894-S Barber dime?
Verify the certification number on the grading service's own lookup page, match the listing photographs to the certification record, check for cleaning, and compare the mintmark shape and position against published photographs of the genuine issue. Any coin offered as an 1894-S dime warrants extraordinary evidence and documented provenance; a few dozen fakes exist for every genuine piece, usually altered from an 1894-O or a common S-mint dime.
Why do sources give different mintage figures for the 1894-S?
Sources disagree on what these twenty-four pieces were. One published table places the figure in its business-strike column and another in its proof column, and the grading services have certified examples in both categories. The figure is reported here as struck, without asserting which it was.
Related dates
Guides for this coin
All guides →Barber Coinage: Collecting Dimes, Quarters & Halves
One Liberty-head design across three denominations (1892-1916). Affordable Victorian-era silver as a type set, plus legendary keys like the 1894-S dime and the 1901-S quarter.
1 min readPractical GuideBuilding a US Type Set
Build a U.S. type set by defining the included designs, grade targets, verification rules, and a current coin-by-coin budget.
2 min readEducationWhat Makes a Coin a “Key Date”, and Why It Drives Value
Coins from the same series can differ sharply in availability and demand. Learn how date, mintmark, variety, grade, and surfaces shape key-date research.
1 min readBuying GuideApproachable Key-Date Coins to Research First
Seven dates that teach scarcity, identification, grade tradeoffs, and counterfeit-aware buying, without promising a fixed price or resale result.
1 min readMintage sources
Mintage figures are U.S. Mint production records, cross-checked against the published tables below on 2026-08-02. Where those tables disagree, the disagreement is disclosed on the affected page rather than resolved silently.
- CoinMintages.com, Barber Dime mintages — Business strikes and proofs listed separately. Used as the business-strike figures here.
- LandOfCoins, Barber Dime mintage — Independent table with proofs in their own column. Agrees with the above on every issue.
- USA Coin Book, Barber Dime — Third table, whose Philadelphia figures add that year's proofs into the total. Used to confirm the convention rather than as a primary source.
Spotted an error? Submit a correction.