Collecting Possibilities Among the Half Dimes

WHEN A YOUNG UNITED STATES Congress got around to authorizing a Mint and deciding on a system of coinage, the half dime was the smallest silver piece in the line-up. There are plenty of collector stories about what was then called the “half disme” – pronounced “half deem” – being the very first coins made as part of the fledgling, new monetary system, even though their total number was tiny. And yet for years after this first attempt, half dime production could politely be called an afterthought of the Mint. The first year that saw over one million of these little silver pieces produced was 1829, decades after the people running the Mint had gotten down to the business of making money by making money. But the denomination would continue onward all the way to 1873, which means