1792 Dime Patterns

About This Coin

Produced at the Philadelphia Mint during the foundational year of American coinage, the 1792 Dime Patterns represent experimental designs for the ten-cent denomination authorized by the Coinage Act of April 2, 1792. Various Mint engravers and outside artists explored different artistic approaches before the Mint settled on the Draped Bust design that inaugurated regular dime production in 1796. The dime denomination itself was an innovation — the word derives from the French dixieme (tenth), and the concept of decimal coinage was still novel in a world accustomed to pounds-shillings-pence. Pattern coins from 1792 occupy a unique position as artifacts from the Mint's birth year, and dime patterns are among the rarest denominations in this elite category. Each surviving example documents a design possibility considered and rejected in favor of the approach that became standard production coinage. The diversity of experimental designs reflects the open-ended creative process during this formative period when American coinage's visual identity remained entirely unsettled.