Bill's double dimes
1875 PF

Owner Comments:

When the U.S. mint system launched the Twenty Cent Piece in 1875, most of the mintage was concentrated in the western states at the Carson City and San Francisco mints because their congressmen had claimed that the coin was most needed in that region. As a result the Philadelphia mint produced a modest mintage of 36,910 business strike pieces plus 2,790 Proof coins. This was a high Proof mintage for the time and was much higher than the Proof mintages for the other denominations of the period. This would seem to indicate that the mint was anticipating a strong collector demand and novelty interest in the new coin.

Oddly enough the number of surviving 1875 Proof Twenty Cent Pieces is comparable to the other Proof coin age years. This would indicate that either a large number of Proof coins were placed in circulation, or more likely many pieces went unsold and were subsequently melted. It has been estimated that over a third of the mintage of the 1877 Proof double dimes were melted (510 minted, estimated 350 survive today), and it is probable that many of the 1875 Proof coins realized the same fate.

The coin pictured above is an very attractive PR-64 example with moderate cameo contrast. For whatever reason I found that locating an attractive example of the 1875 Proof double dime more difficult than the 1876 and 1878 pieces. I do agree with the general accessment that this date is the second most common Proof Twenty Cent Piece. The 1877 piece is the scarcest followed by the 1878, 1975 and then the 1876, which is the most common issue Proof issue.