THE DIME WITHOUT AN OLIVE BRANCH

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V29 2026 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 29, Number 12, 2026, Article 23

About the dime with the eagle lacking an olive branch - the Washington Post has an article explaining how it came about. Despite the confusion and controversy, I'm glad it has people looking at their coins again instead of blindly spending them. Of course, these days I'm sure there are a lot of people who've never actually seen one yet but already have an opinion because of what they've consumed on social media. When I speak to kids about coins, I encourage them to pick one up and just look at it and notice parts of the design. Then I tell them, "congratulations - you're a numismatist - someone who studies coins." -Editor

A temporarily new-issued dime that commemorates America's 250th anniversary is drawing criticism for its lack of olive branches — a symbol of peace.

Instead, the back of the dime showcases the Great Seal of the United States, featuring a bald eagle, but it's clutching only arrows, a symbol of war, and lacks the traditional olive branch in its other talon.

The design for the reimagined commemorative dime took shape months before President Donald Trump was reelected and was intended as a nod to the Revolutionary War that created the nation, not modern times. But the dime started going into circulation the same week that Trump seized Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro in early January.

The design of the back of the new dime, unveiled in December, depicts an eagle with an empty right talon clutching arrows in its left claw — inscribed with the phrase "LIBERTY OVER TYRANNY." On its front, the dime illustrates a "determined Liberty as the winds of revolution waft through her hair," according to the U.S. Mint material explaining the change.

The new dime is part of a broader set of redesigned coins circulating this year to celebrate America's semiquincentennial. The final design of the coin was one of several illustrations reviewed by the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee in 2024. That October, right before Trump would be elected for a second presidential term, the impartial federal advisory committee recommended the design to the treasury secretary.

The medallic artist behind it, Eric David Custer, told the news publication Spotlight PA in February that his design was inspired by the Great Seal of the United States. In 1782, Charles Thomson, who presented the final design of the great seal to Congress, explained that "the Olive branch and arrows denote the power of peace & war which is exclusively vested in Congress."

Custer, who has worked for the U.S. Mint since 2008, told Spotlight PA that his new design represents the colonists before and during the American Revolution. He said he omitted the olive branch to show that the colonies had not yet reached peace, but a talon remained empty to show that they were waiting for it.

McNally said in a statement that the designs, which also include new illustrations on the quarter, nickel and half dollar, "depict the story of America's journey toward a ‘more perfect union,' and celebrate America's defining ideals of liberty."

This is what I think Tom Kays was referring to in his mention of the coin in my Numismatic Diary elsewhere in this issue: "We understand the right talon is empty for now, but we wonder if it will pick up an olive branch by 2033 at the 250th anniversary of the conclusion of the War for American Independence as peace in 1783 was once and again established."

But yeah, the missing branch can indeed be interpeted another way. -Editor

The U.S. Mint first made dimes in 1796. Beginning in 1946, soon after the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Mint released a dime to honor his birthday. The front of the Roosevelt dime shows the former president in profile. The U.S. Mint describes the rear of the Roosevelt coin as showing a torch, olive branch and oak branch to "represent liberty, peace, and strength."

The U.S. Mint says that in 2027, the dime will return immediately to its previous design featuring Roosevelt.

Arthur Shippee and Robert Laviana passed along the Fortune article on the new dime. Thanks. -Editor

It's interesting to note, however, the 1916 Standing Liberty Quarter, a medal that also will be released this year in commemoration of the 250th anniversary (dubbed by the Mint as the SemiQ), features a standing Liberty holding an olive branch on the front, and on the back, the talons of an eagle gripping an olive branch.

Perhaps the most famous dime is the Mercury dime which was minted between 1916 and 1946. Designer Adolph Weinman chose to use a Roman fasces—an axe bound tightly in a bundle of rods—wrapped in an olive branch, together symbolizing military readiness tempered by a desire for peace, in a nod to the Roman Republic. Three years after the Mercury dime debuted, Benito Mussolini adopted the fasces as the emblem of his Italian fascist movement, even where the name derived from. It was then replaced in 1946 by the Roosevelt dime, in honor of President Franklin D. Roosevelt following his death. The dime remains the one in use today.

The eagle didn't always err on the side of peace, and instead, faced the arrows between 1877 and 1945, until President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9646 on Oct. 25, 1945, which changed the direction of the eagle from the arrows to the olive branch. Reportedly, according to the Winston Churchill archives, the president was very happy about the change, and told the British prime minister "The eagle used to face the arrows but I have redesigned it so that it now faces the olive branches."

Churchill's response? "With the greatest respect, I would prefer the American eagle's neck to be on a swivel so that it could face the olive branches or the arrows, as the occasion might demand."