1894-S Barber Dime

Twenty-four dimes and no explanation

Official mint records say the San Francisco Mint struck 24 Barber dimes in the first half of 1894, and no more for the rest of the year. At ten cents apiece that is $2.40 of coinage. Every one was struck as a proof, with mirrored fields, and all came from a single pair of dies, which suggests they were made at roughly the same time. Aside from the line in the mint report, the first public notice that the coins existed did not appear until the March 1900 issue of The Numismatist.

Why so few were made has never been settled. The oldest explanation, printed in The Numismatist in April 1928 from information Farran Zerbe said he was given at the San Francisco Mint in 1905, holds that a bullion account had to be closed at the end of the fiscal year on June 30, 1894, and the dime dies were put to work to balance it. A related version says the mint's audit was off by $2.40. Later researchers found the story hard to square with the coins themselves: if the job was simply to balance a ledger, nobody would have bothered to strike the pieces as proofs.

A second account came from James Johnson in a Coin World article of September 13, 1972, based on what collector Earl Parker said he heard from Hallie Daggett, daughter of the mint superintendent. In that telling, seven banker friends of Superintendent John Daggett visited the mint in 1894 and each received three freshly struck proof dimes, and the last three went to Daggett, who gave them to Hallie. William Burd, writing in The Numismatist in February 1994, rejected the bankers detail as fiction and suggested Daggett may simply have produced the dimes as souvenirs for a reception or party. Other theories hold that the pieces were die trials, or that a small leftover of bullion could only be coined into dimes.

One more fact complicates every theory. One or more examples were reserved for the Assay Commission, which met on February 13, 1895, and it is not known whether those coins were among the 24 or struck in addition to them. As one widely reprinted catalog analysis concluded, until someone finds day-to-day mint records from San Francisco, everything beyond the mintage, the proof finish, the single die pair and the assay reservation is speculation.

The superintendent and his daughter

John Daggett was born on May 9, 1833. He came to California in 1852 with his brother David, who fell ill, turned back and died on the voyage home. John stayed, served as postmaster of the small town of Sawyer's Bar, entered politics in 1859, spent the Civil War years in Nevada and from 1865 ran a mine with partners that they sold in 1872. He bought it back in 1895.

He served 11 sessions in the California legislature and was elected lieutenant governor, holding the office from 1882 to 1888 while living in Los Angeles. In those years he founded the town of Daggett, California, northeast of Los Angeles. He was also chosen to represent California at the World's Columbian Exposition. He became superintendent of the San Francisco Mint on July 31, 1893, and served until July 31, 1897. He died on August 30, 1919, at 86.

Daggett and his wife, Alice Foree, whom he married in 1870, had three surviving children: Ben, Hallie and Leslie. Hallie is the center of the most famous story about the coin. As it is usually told, her father gave her three of the new dimes and told her to save them until she was as old as he was, and on the way home she spent one on a dish of ice cream. She kept the other two for decades and sold them in the 1950s; one pedigree record says Earl Parker bought from her sometime between 1949 and 1954, and the Johnson account dates the purchase to 1950.

The ice cream story rests on thin evidence. It reached print through Parker's memory two decades after the fact, and Parker was relying on what Hallie recalled when she was 72. One cataloger asked the obvious question: why would Daggett give all three coins to his middle child and none to the others? The story survives because it explains something real, a worn 1894-S dime in a series where every other known piece was carefully preserved.

San Francisco in a hard year

The dimes were struck during the slump that followed the Panic of 1893, when demand for newly minted coin fell sharply. One explanation offered for the tiny mintage is simply that San Francisco already had plenty of dimes on hand and no reason to strike more.

It was a turbulent year across the country. Coxey's Army, the first significant American protest march, set out from Massillon, Ohio, for Washington on March 25. On May 11 some 3,000 workers at the Pullman Palace Car Company walked out in a wildcat strike against wage cuts, and a bituminous coal strike had already closed mines across the central states. In September a forest fire at Hinckley, Minnesota, killed more than 450 people.

The same year brought small modern beginnings: Coca-Cola was sold in bottles for the first time on March 12, Milton S. Hershey founded his chocolate company in February, and the first issue of Billboard was published in Cincinnati on November 1. On July 4 the short-lived Republic of Hawaii was proclaimed.

From $2.40 to $2.16 million

Collectors have tracked each known coin by its chain of owners, and the record is unusually detailed. The Newcomer specimen sold for $2,350 in 1945. The coin long known as the Eliasberg duplicate, from the cabinet of J.M. Clapp and then Louis Eliasberg Sr., sold for $2,150 at auction in New York in October 1947. In 1957 a 19-year-old collector paid $4,750 at auction for another example, a sum that made national news; he later sold it for $6,000 and went on to a prominent career in rare coins. A heavily worn piece, the one most often called the Ice Cream specimen, turned up in a New York department store in 1957; one account says it was bought there for $2.40.

Prices climbed steadily. The Eliasberg duplicate brought $275,000 in January 1990 and sold privately in 1998 for $825,000. The primary Eliasberg coin brought $451,000 in May 1996. In 2005 two examples sold for more than $1 million: the Daggett coin at $1,035,000 in January and the Eliasberg duplicate at $1,322,500 in March. In July 2007 the Eliasberg duplicate sold privately for $1.9 million, and that October another example, graded PCGS Proof 64, brought $1,552,500 at auction.

On January 7, 2016, at the Florida United Numismatists convention in Tampa, the Eliasberg duplicate, by then graded Proof 66 by PCGS with a green CAC sticker, sold for $1,997,500. In August 2019 a Proof 63 example once owned by Los Angeles Lakers owner Jerry Buss brought $1,320,000 at auction in Chicago; the buyer was Dell Loy Hansen, then owner of Real Salt Lake, who was trying to assemble an example of every coin the U.S. Mint has made since 1792. In December 2020 the primary Eliasberg coin, graded NGC Proof 65, sold for $1,440,000.

In January 2025 the Eliasberg duplicate sold again, this time from the Bruce S. Sherman Collection, for $2,160,000, a record for any proof Barber dime. On September 1, 2026, the coin the teenage collector had bought in 1957 returned to auction for the first time in 36 years, after sales of $77,000 in 1987 and about $93,500 around 1990, and brought $1,250,500 against an estimate of $1.5 million.

How the nine are told apart

The 1894-S is a standard Barber dime in every physical respect: 2.50 grams, 17.9 millimeters across, 90 percent silver and 10 percent copper, with a reeded edge. The obverse shows Liberty with a cap and cropped hair; the reverse has a wreath around the words ONE DIME. What sets the coins apart is their proof finish and their history, and authentication rests on matching a coin to a known specimen.

Researchers have published competing rosters since 1972. Walter Breen's lists counted 12 coins; a 1991 roster counted 10; most specialists now accept nine, and William Burd's numbering is the standard. Three of the older entries are now considered duplicates or unverified, including a coin once said to be in the Connecticut State Library, which researcher Phil Carrigan found the library does not have.

Individual coins are identified by small marks. The Daggett specimen, for instance, has a slight depression below the D of UNITED and a lint mark between the final S and the O. Grades on the census run from about Good 4 and Almost Good 3 for the two worn pieces up to Proof 66, and the rankings are disputed: one cataloger argued that the Daggett coin and the primary Eliasberg coin are the two finest, despite the higher certified grade of the Eliasberg duplicate.

Some of the nine drop out of sight for decades. A 2005 catalog roster noted that the Rappaport specimen had not been seen since the late 1950s and listed the former Buss coin as unlocated; the Buss coin reappeared at auction in 2019, its first public offering since 1988.

One of the Big Three

Collectors group the 1894-S dime with the 1804 silver dollar and the 1913 Liberty Head nickel as the Big Three of American coin rarities. Of the three, it is the only one that was officially recorded in the Mint's reports at the time it was made.

Charles E. Barber, who designed it, was Chief Engraver of the Mint and designed the dime, quarter and half dollar introduced in 1892. Barber dimes were struck through 1916 at four mints: Philadelphia, New Orleans, San Francisco and Denver. Many ordinary Barber coins were melted for their silver when prices spiked in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Before 2026, only five had appeared at auction since 2005, according to the firm that sold one that year, and the sales have drawn national coverage. For a coin with a face value of ten cents, the 1894-S remains defined by the gap between its tiny mintage and the size of its legend.

The numbers

Mintage

24, all proofs

Known survivors

9 (one roster allows only 8); 7 proofs with mirrored surfaces and 2 heavily worn

Weight

2.50 grams

Diameter

17.9 mm

Thickness

1.35 mm

Composition

90% silver, 10% copper

Edge

Reeded

Designer

Charles E. Barber (design dated 1892)

Mint

San Francisco (S mintmark)

Timeline

1. May 9, 1833

   John Daggett, future superintendent of the San Francisco Mint, is born.

2. Jul 31, 1893

   Daggett takes office as superintendent of the San Francisco Mint.

3. 1894

   The San Francisco Mint strikes 24 proof Barber dimes in the first half of the year, from a single pair of dies.

4. Feb 13, 1895

   The Assay Commission meets; one or more 1894-S dimes had been reserved for it.

5. Mar 1900

   The Numismatist carries the first public notice that the coins exist.

6. Apr 1928

   The Numismatist prints the bullion-account explanation for the 24-coin mintage.

7. May 1945

   The Newcomer specimen sells for $2,350 at auction.

8. Oct 1947

   The Eliasberg duplicate sells at auction in New York for $2,150.

9. 1957

   A 19-year-old collector buys an example at auction for a record $4,750; a worn piece surfaces in a New York department store.

10. Sep 13, 1972

    James Johnson publishes the Daggett 'presentation' account and the first modern roster in Coin World.

11. Feb 1994

    William Burd publishes 'The Inscrutable 1894-S Dime' and the nine-coin roster now in common use.

12. Jan 2005

    The Daggett specimen sells for $1,035,000 at auction.

13. Jul 2007

    The Eliasberg duplicate sells privately for $1.9 million.

14. Jan 7, 2016

    The PCGS Proof 66 Eliasberg duplicate sells for $1,997,500 in Tampa.

15. Aug 2019

    The former Jerry Buss coin sells for $1,320,000 in Chicago to Dell Loy Hansen.

16. Dec 2020

    The primary Eliasberg coin, NGC Proof 65, sells for $1,440,000.

17. Jan 2025

    The Eliasberg duplicate sells for $2,160,000, a record for a proof Barber dime.

18. Sep 1, 2026

    The coin bought by a teenager in 1957 sells for $1,250,500, its first auction in 36 years.

The world in 1894

• Feb 9, 1894

  Milton S. Hershey founds the Hershey Chocolate Company in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

• Mar 12, 1894

  Coca-Cola is sold in bottles for the first time.

• Mar 25, 1894

  Coxey's Army sets out from Massillon, Ohio, for Washington.

• May 11, 1894

  About 3,000 Pullman Palace Car Company workers begin a wildcat strike.

• Jul 4, 1894

  The Republic of Hawaii is proclaimed.

• Sep 1, 1894

  The Great Hinckley Fire in Minnesota kills more than 450 people.

• Nov 1, 1894

  The first issue of Billboard is published in Cincinnati.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, 1894-S Barber Dime is number 18 of 100 in the coins entries of the FLOAT 100. 96 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (13 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The whole 1894-S mintage had a face value of $2.40.
• Of the Big Three American rarities, the 1894-S dime is the only one that was officially recorded in the Mint's reports at the time it was made.
• Superintendent John Daggett had earlier been lieutenant governor of California and founded the town of Daggett, California.
• The story that Hallie Daggett spent one of the dimes on ice cream was recorded through a collector's memory of what she told him when she was 72.
• A 19-year-old who paid $4,750 for an example in 1957 later sold it for $6,000; the same coin brought $1,250,500 in 2026.
• Older rosters counted as many as 12 known coins; a coin once said to be in the Connecticut State Library turned out not to be there.
• Basketball team owner Jerry Buss and soccer team owner Dell Loy Hansen have both owned the same 1894-S dime.