Half dime Refence Books

aus3000tin

Hi All,

Are there any good half dime reference books ??
Covering die marriages, proofs & such.

Thanks,

Chris

yosclimber

The Valentine (1931) book in the Quarterman (1975) reprint is the best place to start.
https://www.amazon.com/United-States-Half-Dimes/dp/088000049X/
This includes later supplements by Breen and Ahwash and other sources.
It covers all US Half Dimes.
You can find the original 1931 Valentine portion on the web as a free PDF:
https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.$b460918
The photo plates are actually a little better in this PDF than they are in the 1975 reprint.

If you are interested in the 1792-1837 bust half dimes, the Logan-McCloskey book is best.
https://www.amazon.com/Federal-dimes-1792-1837-Russell-Logan/dp/B0006FBRV0/
However, it is out of print and hard to find.
There is a very good website which has excellent photos for attributing the Capped Bust (1829-1837) series:
http://www.everythinghalfdimes.com/

For Liberty Seated Half Dimes, there are some additional options.
1. Blythe (1992) https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guide-Liberty-Seated-Dimes/dp/188073107X/
It is also out of print. It is also not that useful, because it includes many attribution errors.
2. Flynn (2014) https://www.coinworld.com/news/us-coins/2014/11/seated-half-dimes-kevin-flynn-coin-world-literature-numismatics-collecting-hobby.all.html
This is not a complete listing of die marriages. It focuses on repunched dates, overdates, DDOs, the 1838 repunched stars, and the 1838 "small stars".
3. For the past year, I have been making free PDFs covering all known die marriages for a few individual year/mintmarks, with detailed color photos. https://web.stanford.edu/~clint/hdag/index.htm
Only 6 are done so far, but more are in progress, and if you are interested in one of these 6 years, they cover it very well.
4. The Liberty Seated Collectors Club has forums by denomination, and several of the individual die marriages and attribution questions are discussed.
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/seateddimes/seated-half-dime-q-a-f67/
5. The Liberty Seated Collectors Club has published the Gobrecht Journal for several decades, and it includes research articles with new discoveries and updated lists of die marriages for dates. Issues 1-120 are available as free PDFs on the Newman Numismatic Portal, and there is an index by denomination and year in an Excel file. You can download all these 120 issues (1974-2014) in a single ZIP file with the index from my webpage:
https://web.stanford.edu/~clint/q/Gobrecht_Journal.htm
They are mostly useful if you already have the Valentine and Blythe books, and want to get more detailed info on particular die marriages. They are an essential source for making my PDFs.
6. For proof half dimes, Breen's Proof Encyclopedia (1989 second edition) has details on the known die marriages that the other books do not have. The online version is easy to access. The listings are by year, so for half dimes the info is spread through the book, but that's not a problem if you are just looking up one year at a time.
https://www.pcgs.com/books/breen-proofs/

I hope this helps.

oih82w8

Thanks Clint! @yosclimber