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Message:: [QUOTE="johnmilton, post: 8509419, member: 101855"]I have owned two 1793 Half Cents. Aside from seeing them in auctions, I have never run into a 1796. I had one chance to buy an 1802, reverse of 1800. A dealer friend, who built a significant collection of half cents without me knowing it, sold it off circa 2010. He had one in VF-ish, which has to be among the better examples known. I could have bought it, but I have moved on from half cents by then. Another collector friend had an 1802 C-1 for years and didn’t know it. The coin graded Fair, and the reverse was almost slick. One day he had it sitting on his desk, and the light caught it just right. The old reverse is distinctive from the new reverse, and he spotted it. I saw the coin once. If it had been mine, I would have spotted it right away. I offered to buy it from him, but he wouldn’t entertain my offer. This was when I was really into the half cent collection. I knew collectors who had the varieties I needed, but they weren’t selling in the late 1980s. One collector had three of the 15 known examples of a rare variety. Another collector had two of them. I got tired of waiting and figured I had hit a brick wall with the collection. I was not far off. Those coins were sold at auction 20 to 25 years later. You needed financial courage and a strong checkbook to win much of anything in those auctions.[/QUOTE]