Three Half-Dollars for the 19th Century

Collectors today have a serious love affair with Morgan and Peace dollars. Some shake their heads and stay away from these two classic series of big silver. But plenty of folks try to assemble excellent sets of one or both of these series, often in various grades of mint state. While that can be fun, the focus means that we sometimes overlook another denomination that qualifies as big silver and that is steeped in history. We’re talking about our half dollars and their types, of course.

Capped Bust Half-Dollar:

The fifty-cent piece was one of the original denominations authorized when Congress eventually endorsed a monetary system of copper, silver, and gold coinage and got around to getting a mint up and running. Indeed, the Flowing Hair half-dollars – our very first – came out of the gate in 1794, but in a pretty small amount. Trying to get our hands on one for any collection today will be an expensive proposition. Likewise, the second design, the Draped Bust, was the image on our half-dollar from 1796 up to 1807. But the Capped Bust half-dollar, a design that would grace our half dollars in one form or another from 1807 to 1838, is a rather different story. Here is a classic piece of big United States silver that we just might be able to add to any growing collection, even if we do not have a mountain of our half dollars to spend on the pursuit of a piece.

When collecting classic United States coins today, a fair bet is that if there were over one million minted, the chances are good that we can call such a coin common. This is less true the farther back we go, since coins did make it to the melting pot at times when silver and gold spiked in prices, and the older a coin is, the more chances it had to take that dive into the pot. With that in mind, we should note that the Capped Bust half-dollars first went over the one-million mark back in 1808, with an official total of 1,368,600 pieces. Alas, that total does not make this a cheap half dollar today.

P.C.G.S, as with pics below.

If we are looking for a Capped Bust half that we could conceivably think of as cheap, we’ll probably need to look into the latter half of the series. A good example might be the 1827, which has a mintage total of slightly over 5.4 million. Curiously, this is not the most common of the Capped Bust half dollars either. A coin like this can be had for about $150 in a grade such as very fine, or VF-20. That’s not too bad for a half dollar, which still sports some good detail, and which is just about a century old.

This can be the first piece in our trio of classic halves. Others in the Capped Bust series might also serve equally well.

Liberty Seated Halves:

By the time the Liberty Seated design for the half dollar was unveiled, the production of half-dollars was a major aspect of the operations at the main mint in Philadelphia. That being said, this is a series that saw both some impressive highs, as well as some amazing lows when it comes to annual totals for fifty-cent pieces. Even though 1839 was the first year of issue, and even though there were several years with millions coined, it was 1877 that saw the outright enormous figure of 8.3 million of these big guys minted. This certainly qualifies as common by any collector's measure today.

Even though a piece like the 1877 is a common Seated Liberty half dollar, that does not mean it is dirt cheap. The modern-day desire for mint state coins means that even the low end – the MS-60, that is – will be expensive. But something like an extra fine, or EF-40, example, will end up being much, much more affordable. We can snag one of these for less than $200, most likely. Once again, we have a decent-looking coin at a good price. This can easily become the second item in our trio.

Barber Half-Dollar

The Barber half-dollar series is a relatively short one, with these fifty-cent pieces having been issued only from 1892 up to and including 1916. In that time, there are a handful of rare dates and mint marks, coins that are truly the keys to the series. But there are also two dates with mintages above 5 million. As well, there are several dates and mint marks in the range of 2 – 4 million, all of which are common by any measure.

Those most common of the common Barber halves are the 1899 and the 1908-O. Both of these are quite affordable in grades such as VF-20 or EF-40, but once again rise steeply when we get to the mint state grades. Still, it should not be difficult to find either of these two coins, or the many others within the series that have multi-million dollar totals. Now we have the third of our classic silver pieces.

Beyond Just a Trio?

We’ve just shown how a person could put together a trio of half-dollars that pretty much encompasses the output of almost the entire nineteenth century. And while we can claim that this trio is a great collection all by itself, it doesn’t take a proverbial rocket scientist to realize that these three can also be the jumping off point for much larger collections. Even an assembly of Capped Bust half-dollars is not something that has to cost a fortune. It can be both a fun and educational challenge to see just what we might be able to collect here. Good luck to any of us who give it a try!

Mark Benvenuto has been collecting since the 1960s and became seriously interested in the silver coins of pre-World War II Germany when he was stationed in Mannheim in the 1980s.

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