How much would you pay for a dime? Ten cents? $1.6 million? An 1873 dime recently sold for $1.6 million at a rare coin auction in Philadelphia.
According to the Associated Press , the rare coin was minted in Carson City, Nevada in 1873 during a one-day run. The 1873-CC “No Arrows” Liberty Seated dime was the prize piece from the Battle Barn Collection, which included 111 coins minted in Nevada before 1893.
Chris Napolitano, president of Stack’s Bowers Galleries, which auctioned the coin, said that the price was driven to $1.6 million by four buyers who engaged in a bidding war for the rare coin.
Napolitano said:
“Generally speaking, in the coin auction business, you might get a couple of people fighting each other… On this one, we had four or five buyers over a million dollars. We had a fair amount of buyers pursuing it.”
The price was also driven up because the 1873-CC “No Arrows” Liberty Seated dime is a one-of-a-kind coin. According to LibertySeatedDime.com, the Carson City Mint produced 12,400 dimes with no arrows in 1873. A weight standard change forced the mint to melt down the coins to create slightly heavier dimes. The new dimes had arrows place to either side of the date to mark the change. One coin, however, was kept without arrows for assay purposes.
The rare coin auction in Carson city involved 111 coins that were minted in Nevada before the mint closed in 1893. The Battle Born Collection brought in a total of nearly $10 million.
