Although long considered as being too common to be of any interest to serious collectors, over the past few decades the Capped Bust Head (or Liberty Cap) half dollar of 1807 through 1836 has come into its own. This series has been the subject of several critical studies, including a masterful work by Al Overton showing the die marriages for the entire life span. Although at the present time the half dollar is little used in the marketplace, due to political decisions in the 1960s, in earlier years it was a very important coin. It all began more than 200 years ago.
The half dollar was first struck in December 1794 and was the equivalent of the old Spanish four reales piece. During early 1795 coinage was especially heavy but this was not due to public demand but rather that there was not a powerful enough coining press at the Mint to produce the silver dollars wanted by the depositors. In May 1795 that problem was solved with the arrival of a new press and half dollar coinage soon stopped; the marketplace was saturated with this denomination for the time being and it was not until 1801 that full-scale coinage resumed.
In 1801, as part of a long-range plan to stop making silver dollars (too many were being exported to the Orient, never to return), Mint
