It only took a few words in a public notice for my imagination to kick into a higher gear. The Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee will be meeting in two weeks for a two-day session. Nothing unusual there, so let’s look at the agenda. It mentions coin change for the Semiquincentennial, already shown to be a hot topic, so it’s sure to generate a little excitement again. It was the phrase “Review and discussions of the candidate designs for the 2026 Semiquincentennial Dime” that got the heart pounding.

It even overshadowed an error in the notice, that the meeting would start at 10 p.m. instead of 10 a.m. That’s forgivable, so let’s get back to that dime.

While the Semiquincentennial is known as the nation’s 250th birthday, the year is also the 230th anniversary of the nation welcoming 10-cent coins. Of course, the denomination’s design has changed in that time, but not in my lifetime. This is groundbreaking.

When we celebrated the U.S. Bicentennial, the smaller denominations were left off the guest list. The Lincoln cent, Jefferson five-cent coin and Roosevelt dime rolled along, business as usual. Nobody gave them a second glance in change, and a lot more change was circulating in 1976 than will be in 2026.

This notice of a “proposed” (can’t get ahead of myself here, though the thought is tempting) change is long overdue. While Lincoln has looked basically the same in the nearly 50 years since the Bicentennial, the cent’s composition changed, and the reverse of the coin has changed a few times (several in 2009). The Jefferson 5-cent coin went through its Westward Ho phase in 2004 and 2005, ending up in 2006 with an obverse portrait change that was more drastic than the reverse changes, in some opinions.

For the circulating Roosevelt dime, only the date has changed since the design’s installation, and 2026 will mark its 80th anniversary. With the freedom available under the act calling for the Semiquincentennial redesigns, what changes are coming, and where on this coin?

Whatever changes are made will be temporary, just like they were 50 years ago. They will be circulating coins, and we can already slow the roll on the idea that they will be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. They will be different, but that’s all, because there will be millions of them. They will just provide an interesting change of pace in any folder of the collector who now sees row upon row of the same design in a dime album or folder.

When 2027 rolls around, the design will revert, but for how long? The plot thickens.

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