Collectors Corner^SM: The Collectibles Marketplace

2009 circulation-strike Roosevelt Dimes were the lowest-mintage issues of their series in many decades and remain challenging to find in circulation today. Click image to enlarge.

When the 2009 Roosevelt Dimes hit the scene years ago, collectors noticed something unusual: these coins were extremely difficult to find in circulation. The reason the 2009 Roosevelt Dimes seemed so scarce was that relatively few were made and collectors pounced on saving these coins whenever they encountered them in circulation.

The economy was lagging in 2009, an effect of the Great Recession. Amid rampant job losses and deepening pathos on a sputtering Wall Street, there were plenty of coins already in circulation to satisfy economic demands; there was hardly any need for the typical billions of dimes the U.S. Mint had customarily pumped out each year by that point.

When all was said and done, the United States Mint didn’t even manage to strike 150 million dimes in 2009. The Philadelphia Mint produced only 96,500,000 dimes in 2009, while Denver eked out an anemic sum of 49,500,000. Just for some historical perspective, these figures marked the lowest circulating mintages for any U.S. dime dating back to the early 1960s!

It would be a far stretch to consider the 2009 Roosevelt Dimes rare or even scarce – they simply aren’t, at least not in absolute terms. However, the 2009-P and 2009-D Roosevelt Dimes are undeniably tough to find in circulation and are worth looking for from the standpoint of their relative scarceness; this, as compared to the much larger outputs of Roosevelt Dimes at essentially any other point in the copper-nickel clad era.

It’s therefore natural to wonder if the 2009 Roosevelt Dimes are valuable, even marginally more so than their contemporaries. In essence, the 2009-P and 2009-D Roosevelt Dimes are worth roughly what their period peers are – around $7 in MS64 and MS65 grades. Full Bands examples are worth expectedly more, at some $8 to $15 in the MS64FB and MS65FB grades.

At the grade threshold of MS67FB, prices lurch into the low to mid-hundreds for either issue. However, the 2009-D Roosevelt Dime does take a few by surprise with its nearly $2,000 price tag for an MS68FB. This all just goes to show that even in the realm of modern copper-nickel Roosevelt Dimes, there are still many cool surprises awaiting collectors.