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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;johnmilton, post: 25379272, member: 101855&quot;]1797 ... One of my favorite years.</p><p><br /></p><p>That year the mint experimented with having the number stars on the obverse equal the number states in the union. They learned that things were getting too crowded and ultimately went back to 13 stars. There were 15, 16 and then 13 stars on coins. The only coin that had all&nbsp; three at one point was the half dime.</p><p><br /></p><p>The years started with 15 stars on the obverse of the 1797 half dime. You will note that the two &quot;7&quot;s in the date are the same size. This indicates that the sinker punched them at the same time.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1624964[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>The addition of Tennessee to the union in 1796 brought the total to 16 and another star. There are two varieties of the the 16 star 1797 half dime.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1624965[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Note that the second &quot;7&quot; is larger than the first. This indicates that the die was made with the date &quot;179_&quot;. When it was brought into service the last &quot;7&quot; was added. It is too large for the coin which met that it was probably supposed to be used on perhaps the dime.</p><p><br /></p><p>Here is the second 1797, 16 star variety.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1624966[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>The obverse die is the same, but the reverse die has a larger eagle, which strikes up much better than the previous two coins. I bought this piece because it was so sharp. It&#039;s unusual to see an early half dime with this much detail. I believe that it was net graded from AU-58 to AU-53 because the scratch on Ms. Liberty&#039;s neck.</p><p><br /></p><p>If you could look at this coin with a 20X glass, you can see that the die sinker made hash marks around the edge before he punched the stars into the surface of the die.</p><p><br /></p><p>Here is the 13 star coin. This variety is quite scarce with probably less than 50 examples known. In this case both of the &quot;7&quot;s are larger than the other two digits in the date.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1624967[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Needless to say this a tough group of coins to find. It took me over 30 years to put this set together. This is all four of the known 1797 half dime varieties.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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