Featured Where I refuse to go.

While that 1802 half dime had a really bad life, it is still a remarkably rare coin. The only other really rare early US silver coin that wasn’t made for collectors or restruck (i.e.-the 1804 dollar and the 1827/3/2 quarter) would be the 1823/2 quarter. (I may be biased, but I’d rather have a rough 1823/2 quarter than that rough 1802 half dime. )

 

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And I am biased because the 1823/2 Quarter would not fit in my collection at all. I only collect quarters by type.

 

Wow! It would appear that an 1802 would go for more than a similarly graded 1792 half disme, but then it also seems that 1802 is far more rare. 2 years earlier, almost to the day, $18K would have brought home one with F12 details that had probably been clumsily dug, bent, and straightened out.

 

The estimated survival for the 1792 half disme is around 300 pieces. The 1802 half dime population is 35 or so.

There are Red Book half dime varieties that are close to equal to or rarer than the 1802. The 1796 over 5 and 1797 13 star obverse are close to it. The 1803 Small Date, with 25 to 30 known, is rarer.

The difference is that those coins are varieties. The 1802 is a date.

 

@johnmilton , I guess what I'm getting at is this, for example.... For the Capped Bust Half series, the 1815/2 is a well known rarity. The reason for this is the war with Britain coupled with a fire at the mint. They just weren't able to mint the coins they needed.

Was there a reason that they minted so few 1802 half dimes? Because it seems anomalous, for no apparent reason.

 

There is no reason we can point to for the rarity. I have to look up the deliveries for the 1800 and 1801. The 1801 is a rare date in its own right. I have never seen a late die state of the 1802 half dime. It does not seem that the single die failed early.

I just finished some research, and I have look at my notes.

 

You have to remember how the number of silver coins to be struck was determined back before 1837. The Mint did not have a bullion fund. They could not go into the market, buy silver, and then use it to struck coins. The ONLY time silver or gold coins would be struck would be when banks, businesses or individuals deposited silver or gold withthe mint and had it made into coins. And then it was the DEPOSITOR not the mint who decided what coin(s) the metal would be made into, not the Mint. Most depositors wanted large coins because they were easier to count and they would get their coins back sooner. The Mint also encouraged undecided depositors to select large coins because it meant less work and wear and tear on the equipment. (It took 20 times as much work to make a dollars worth of half dimes than it did to make a silver dollar.) So if no one ordered hlf dimes, no half dimes were struck. The mintage of the 1802 half dimes probably represented a couple merchants needing some small coins to make change. The 27,000 made in 1801 were probably mostly still around so the merchants didn't need to get half dimes in 1802. In 1803 they made 37,000 and then no half dimes at all were ordered until 1805.