1836

The 1836 dime is the penultimate issue of the Capped Bust series and the second-largest delivery in the entire run, trailing only the 1,410,000 pieces struck the year before. Philadelphia coiners pressed 1,190,000 of these small-diameter ten-cent pieces during a frenzied economic moment, when speculative land buying and credit from the Jackson administration's so-called pet banks (state banks holding federal deposits after the Second Bank charter lapsed) drove silver and gold into circulation at unprecedented rates. The series itself would end the following year with a partial 1837 production before Christian Gobrecht's Seated Liberty design took the denomination in a new direction. Multiple Reich-attributed die marriages exist for the year, a function of the close-collar press technology that demanded fresh dies frequently across a long production run, and specialists today catalog them under the John Reich Collectors Society reference numbers.

Genuine 1836 dimes weigh 2.7 grams on a calibrated scale and measure 18.5 millimeters across the rim, the smaller Small-Type planchet standard introduced for the denomination in 1828 when the close collar replaced the open-collar method. The alloy is 89.24 percent silver and 10.76 percent copper, giving the surfaces a soft white luster when original and a warm gray cast when honestly circulated. Cast counterfeits, the most common deception encountered on this date, betray themselves through a faintly grainy or pebbled texture in the open fields and through soft, mushy detail at Liberty's hair curls and the eagle's wing feathers; weight on those fakes typically runs light because base-metal cores cannot match silver's density. A struck contemporary counterfeit is rare but possible. Edge reeding should be sharp and evenly spaced, since the close collar imparted the reeds during striking rather than as a separate operation. Submitting questionable raw pieces to a major grading service for attribution and authentication remains the safest path, particularly when the seller cannot document chain of custody.

Survival is estimated in the low thousands across all grades, with most extant pieces clustered in the Very Good through Extremely Fine range that reflects decades of pocket commerce before the issue was retired from active use. Mint State coins, while genuinely scarce, are the most available choice alongside the 1835 for collectors building a high-grade type representative of the Capped Bust dime, and prooflike or fully struck examples command meaningful premiums when the cap, stars, and shield lines all show full definition. For the broader story of the design, the technology that produced it, and how it fits alongside its predecessors and the Seated Liberty issues that followed, see the Capped Bust Dime series history.