1896-S Barber Dime

Key date

A low San Francisco mintage and one of the recognised keys of the series.

Mintage

Business strikes: 575,056
Mint: San Francisco (S)
Mintage rank: 4 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

Among the 25 San Francisco issues in the series it is the 3rd smallest. Of the 3,185,056 struck across all mints in 1896, this issue accounts for 18%. Philadelphia struck 3.5 times as many that year. The 1896 split ran Philadelphia 2,000,000, New Orleans 610,000 and San Francisco 575,056. The series median is 3,420,000, so fewer than half as many of these were struck as a typical date. 1896 was the 3rd smallest production year of the 25 in the series.

Every sentence above is computed from the mintage table on this page, not asserted separately.

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

Nothing about this date calls for a check beyond the ones that apply to any certified coin.

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 1896-Scertification number up on the service’s own site. A photograph of a label proves nothing.

PCGS cert lookup NGC cert lookup ANACS cert lookup

Each service publishes its own guarantee with conditions and exclusions. Compare PCGS, NGC and ANACS.

Find a 1896-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.

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Common questions

How many 1896-S Barber dimes were minted?

The San Francisco Mint struck 575,056 1896-S Barber dimes for circulation. That is the 4th lowest business-strike mintage of the 75 date and mintmark combinations in the series.

Is the 1896-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. A low San Francisco mintage and one of the recognised keys of the series.

What should I check before buying an 1896-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.

Guides for this coin

All guides →

Vintage Guide

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 read Practical Guide

Building 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 read Education

What 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 read Buying Guide

Approachable 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 read

Mintage 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.

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