Draped Bust Dimes

Robert Scot designed the Draped Bust dime, applying the same portrait he had used across the other silver denominations to what was then the smallest standard silver coin in the American series. The half dime existed, technically, but the Mint had stopped producing it after 1805, leaving the dime as the bottom rung of the silver ladder for most of the Draped Bust period. Scot's obverse Liberty, facing right with loosely tied hair and a drape across her bust, was the familiar Gilbert Stuart adaptation that had appeared on everything from the half dime to the dollar. By the time it reached the dime the design was well established, and Scot's workshop could produce the dies without much experimentation. The dime was small, just 19 millimeters in diameter and weighing 2.7 grams, and the reduced scale meant that some of the finer details of the portrait were inevitably lost. Liberty's hair looks a bit muddier on a dime than on a half dollar, but that is the nature of shrinking a design meant for a larger canvas.