Any good online reference for half dime die varieties?

collegecoincollector

Just wondering, thanks. I know there are books on the series and I could always search auction archives for each date, but if you know of any good site online I'd appreciate it!

Barndog

the books are better, but this helps for bust stuff

collegecoincollector

ttt for the evening/night crew...

ah, should have specified the liberty seated series. any help would be appreciated!

MrHalfDime

I am afraid that, at least at present, there is no on-line resource which depicts all of the known die marriages for the Liberty Seated half dimes. One of the reasons for this is that no one knows for sure just exactly how many different die marriages there are in the series because there is no comprehensive and up-to-date reference book on the series. Daniel Valentine published his monograph "The United States Half Dimes" in 1931, in which he included 257 different die marriages, or 'varieties' as he called them, that were known to him at the time. Of these, a few need to be delisted, as they are merely die states of other die marriages, but the Valentine reference remains the best resource we have to date.

Because of this, very few collectors have ever attempted to duplicate Valentine's effort and assemble a collection of all known die marriages for the series. Through the efforts of the Liberty Seated Collectors Club (LSCC) we have compiled census surveys of members' holdings of half dimes over the years, and it is very apparent that only a handful of collectors have ever collected the series by Valentine variety number. Al Blythe was perhaps one of the most well known collectors who did so, but even his collection contained less than half of the Valentine varieties. One other LSCC member from the Philadelphia area has one of the most comprehensive collections known and still intact. William A. Harmon, a collector from Ohio, made perhaps the most significant effort towards a 'complete' Valentine variety collection. He sold his collection in 2005 through Heritage, and it can be seen on their Archives here:

http://coins.ha.com/common/search_results.php?N=51+790+231+4294965409+232&Ntk=SI_Titles-Desc&Ntt=William+A.+Harmon

Even Bill Harmon's collection fell short of completion of the Valentine set, but it is one of the most complete which can be studied on-line. However, and I emphasize this word of caution, Heritage removed all of Bill's coins from his holders on which he had his attributions and notes, sent them to various TPG's for grading and 'attribution', and they returned with the most erroneous and nonsensical attributions imaginable. I would not trust any of the variety attributions on the Heritage Archives site for the Harmon coins, as most of them are wrong.

Unfortunately, your best approach for identifying or attributing any Liberty Seated half dimes, with the present literature, is to join the Liberty Seated Collectors Club, purchase the Collective Volumes of past issues of the Gobrecht Journal, and use these to identify your half dimes. If you have specific questions on any individual half dime, please feel free to post it on this forum, or send me the images at:

mrhalfdime@aol.com

... and I will do my best to assist you in the proper attribution.

It has been my life's work to publish a comprehensive encyclopedia on the die marriages of the Liberty Seated half dimes, much like the Logan/McCloskey book on the Bust half dimes. To date I have identified just over 500 distinctly different die marriages for the series, doubling the number that Valentine reported. My reference collection contains nearly 2000 half dimes of all series, including over 1100 Liberty Seated half dimes. One day these will all be published as a resource for collectors like yourself. I am finding that I will likely have to publish the book in several volumes, either dividing the series into two parts (e.g., 1837-1853 NA, and 1853 WA - 1873), or by mints (Philadelphia, New Orleans, and San Francisco), although I prefer the former. I must also de-list all of the erroneous Valentine numbers which are simply die states of other die marriages, and, unfortunately, many of the more recent listings by well intentioned but misguided collectors who did not do the proper research, and have listed redundant numbers for previously known varieties. Until that work is done, we must all use what resources are currently available, such as they are.

collegecoincollector

Thanks a million, MrHalfDime! I was hoping there would be someone on here who is very knowledgeable of the series. I'll continue doing research and let you know if I have any questions. And I agree about the archives being a bit confusing and possibly inaccurate, which is part of the reason I asked this question. I am hoping to join the LSCC soon too and hopefully that will help out a bit. The history is interesting and I can see why Valentine's book hasn't been updated in so long, especially since you already have way more varieties than he did! Congrats on your collection as well and keep up the great work.