I have been fascinated by the early half dimes since I was in high school. The trouble is they have always been expensive, and there was no way I could have afforded one on my allowance and then hourly summer jobs. When I was in college I spotted an 1800 half dime that was in decent shape for $300. I actually went back to my apartment and figured out that I could buy it if I spend every dollar I had. Fortunately I resisted the temptation. One group of three pieces that long been of interest to me is the 1797 half dimes with 15, 16 and 13 stars. Although other U.S. coins from this period have different star counts within the same year, the half dime is only one that has all three. Tennessee became the 16th state to join the Union on June 1, 1796. To celebrate that, a 16th star was added to the obverse of the new dies for silver and gold coins at the Philadelphia Mint. Given that, why is there a 1797 half dime with just 15 stars? The answer is that the dies were made ahead of time. The Robert Scot, the Chief Engraver at the first mint, was not about to throw away a perfectly good die because of fairly small design change. The dies were made with the first three digits “179” entered, and the last digit was dropped in just before the die was put into service. The evidence of that is that the last “7” does not match the style of the first “7” in the date. The second “7” on this 15 star 1797 half dime is smaller than the first, but my photo does not show this detail well. It will be more obvious on the later varieties that I will show you. When that die wore out, the 16 star obverse die was brought into service. This time the second “7” was much larger that the first one. The same 16 star obverse dies was paired with two reverses. Some people like to count the number of berries on the reverse and the relationship of "United States of America" to the leaves in the wreath. I think it's much easier than that. Note the size of the eagle on the next coin. It is larger. It also has a lot more detail. I have never seen the small eagle on the previous two coins fully struck. The first coin is graded AU-53 and NGC called the second one VF-20. My grade was Fine-12 when I submitted it for grading. Finally Robert Scot came to the logical conclusion that he could not continue to add more stars as each state came into the Union. He cut them back to 13 which symbolized the original 13 states. This change in policy resulted in the 13 star variety for the 1797 half dime. Although you might not guess it from the Red Book listing, this coin is much rarer than the other three pieces. (The other three coins are all scarce in their own right with at most 200 to 300 known for each of them.) Russell Logan and John McCloskey rated it as an R-6 in their die variety book, which translates to 13 to 30 examples known. I agree with that observation. This variety shows up at auction two or three times a year.
Your threads are always fascinating for me. Thank you! Off Topic I've always referred to the eagle you show us in the last two reverses as the "Funky Chicken". Chris
You could call him that too. Usually those who write the books don't want to be that dated or informal.
I would be pleased as punch just looking at photos of your spectacular coins. But then your write ups are just so informative..... I said it before.... Man, I just love your posts.
I might add that the obverse of the 1797 13 star variety was made all at once. Notice how the two “7” s match and are too large when compare to the “1” and “9”.
Another very easy way to tell the two 16 star varieties apart is to look at the right stem of the wreath. If it points at the side of the A it is LM-2 (R-4), if it pomts at the foot of the A it is LM-3 (R-5).
