Flowing Hair Half Dollar -- with silver plug

Higashiyama

The Flowing Hair Dollar with silver plug is a rare but now well known variety.

According to Rievers, a few silver plug half dollars have been discovered.

Has anyone on the board ever seen a silver plug half dollar? How many are believed to exist?

FC57Coins

According to the Red Book, silver plug dollars were only made in 1795 and they list them under a mintage of 160,000 or so for the flowing hair variety only. It'd be interesting to find out if the planchets were made underweighed with the hole already made so that whatever the remaining weight that had to be added could be added via the plug and then filed down. Thinking of what a pain this would be I would venture to say that they soon realized that this was a losing proposition.

Frank

LanLord

This design always had me wondering, why would they use a silver plug in a silver coin. I could somewhat understand the silver center cent, if you are making your money worth it's stated value. But what was the idea behind a silver plug in a silver coin?

Gilbert

But what was the idea behind a silver plug in a silver coin?

Weight adjustment. I imagine the planchets were UNDERweight, whereas the OVERweight planchets could be filed down.

Conder101

Gilbert has it right, the planchets were underweight so a plug that was slightly thicker than the planchet was placed in a central hole made in the planchet in order to bring it up to the proper weight. When the plugged planchet was struck the plug would spread over the surrounding planchet like a rivet. The problem is it would be very time consuming to punch the holes in the plabchets and create plugs on the proper weight (Each plug would probably have to be adjusted to match the speciifc planchet.) and then assemble the plugged planchet. For that reason it was probably very quickly abandoned. The plugged planchet pieces should probably be considered to have been struck on experimental planchets. If I remember correctly I think there are somewhere around a dozen plugged dollars from at least 3 varieties known but think there are on one or two plugged halves known.

abuell

I was at the 1997 ANA convention in New York and a good friend walked up to me and showed me a newly purchased early dollar. Since he usually didn't collect early dollars I asked why an early dollar. He said that he wanted to pick up a few and I asked if he knew Mr. Early Dollar, John J. Haugh? He said that he didn't so I took him over to John's table where there were two full cases of nothing but early dollars and introduced him. My friend asked about any '95 silver plugged dollars and sure enough John pulled a very attractive specimen out of his case. Within minutes the deal was done. I believe that my friend still has that coin. John passed away on April 1, 2002 - I dearly miss him, but have many great memories of time spent together discussing coins.

Higashiyama

Does it seem surprising that the silver plug was only discovered within about the past ten years?