VINTAGE Nine genuine 1943 Mercury dimes — American silver coins minted and circulated in the middle of World War II.

Nine genuine 1943 Mercury dimes — American silver coins minted and circulated in the middle of World War II.

This lot includes:

• 7 – 1943-D, Denver Mint
• 1 – 1943-S, San Francisco Mint
• 1 – 1943, Philadelphia Mint (no mintmark)

That gives this little group something especially nice: all three U.S. mints that produced Mercury dimes in 1943 are represented.

Each dime is 90% silver.

These are circulated coins, and they show it. Expect considerable honest wear, surface marks, toning and discoloration consistent with coins that have been around for more than 80 years. Please look carefully at the photographs; the nine coins pictured are the nine coins you will receive.

And that's part of what makes them interesting.

These dimes weren't minted years later to commemorate World War II. They were money while the war was actually happening.

In 1943, Americans were living with ration books, buying war bonds, planting Victory Gardens and working around the clock in factories converted to wartime production. American troops were fighting in North Africa and the Pacific, and before the year was over Allied forces would invade Sicily and Italy.

Meanwhile, back home, ordinary life continued — and ordinary life required pocket change.

A dime like one of these could have crossed a drugstore counter, bought a cup of coffee, ridden in the pocket of a factory worker coming off a wartime shift, or joined countless other coins collected for a war-bond drive.

We'll never know where these particular nine traveled or whose pockets they occupied. But judging by the wear, they certainly don't appear to have spent their lives tucked safely away in a coin collection.

They look like money that did its job.

Nine small pieces of everyday American history, all dated 1943, representing Philadelphia, Denver and San Francisco — and still containing the silver they were struck from more than eight decades ago.

Shipping included in the US.