1827

The 1827 Capped Bust Dime arrived the year after a complete production gap, since the Philadelphia Mint struck no dimes at all in 1826. When the presses returned to the denomination in 1827, output reached 1,215,000 pieces, one of the higher Large Diameter Capped Bust mintages and a sharp jump from the 510,000 delivery of 1825. Die work was unusually active for the volume, and the John Reich Collectors Society catalogs roughly a dozen die marriages for the date, designated JR-1 through JR-12, each pairing a distinct obverse with a specific reverse. Collectors who chase the issue by variety find that some marriages are common while others survive in only a handful of confirmed examples. The coin carries John Reich's familiar capped portrait of Liberty, a heraldic eagle reverse, and the 18.8 millimeter Large Diameter format that defined dimes from 1809 through 1828 before the smaller Close Collar format took over.

Authentication of an 1827 dime begins with weight and fabric. A genuine piece tips the scale at 2.7 grams in .8924 fine silver, and any specimen drifting noticeably outside that mass should be set aside for closer study. Cast counterfeits typically betray themselves with a soft grainy surface and weak reeding along the edge, since the reeded collar of an original strike produces sharp evenly spaced grooves that a cast cannot fully replicate. A more subtle risk involves date alteration, because the much rarer 1822 dime can be fabricated by tooling the final digit of an 1827, so the numerals deserve magnified inspection for retouched fields or unnatural spacing around the base. Serious buyers should restrict purchases to coins encapsulated by a major third party grading service, where attribution to a specific JR marriage and confirmation of original surfaces remove most of the guesswork from a transaction at this price level.

Survivors across all grades are estimated in the low thousands, with circulated VF and XF coins forming the bulk of what reaches the market each year. Mint State examples are genuinely scarce, and auction records from Heritage and Stack's Bowers cluster the finest known pieces in the MS64 to MS65 range, with sharply struck Gems commanding strong five figure results when they appear. For type collectors the 1827 offers an affordable entry into the Large Diameter design, while date and variety specialists treat it as a cornerstone issue thanks to the breadth of marriages available for study. For broader context on John Reich's design, the Large Diameter to Close Collar transition, and the place of the 1827 within the wider run, see the Capped Bust Dime series history.