Help With Overton's Early Half Dollar Die Varieties

Johnny . . The master numbers begin with 101, for the first variety listed under each date and follow in numerical order to the last die marriage listed. Only one master number is assigned for each die marriage. 101a would be from the same pair of dies but indicates a different die state. Using 1795 as an example, with a mintage of just under 300K, 19 obverse and 22 reverse dies were used. The combination of 41 obverse and reverse dies produced 32 separate varieties. In addition, 12 of the 32 have "a" added for a total of 44 different sets of attributes for just this one example.

As for the R (rarity) ratings, here is a chart showing basic guidelines. Hope this answers your question.

Jeffrose has given you good information. Each year starts with an O-101 die marriage and this number increases with each new die marriage. Similarly, new die states of established marriages receive a letter such as O-101a and so on. The rarity number (R) is given for the estimated extant population of any given variety. These go from R1 (common) to R8 (unique or nearly so).

I do not have a copy of the 1967 Overton book, but I would suggest you buy a copy of the third edition (1991 or thereabouts) or fourth edition (2008 or thereabouts). The book has changed some over the years and the comment about number 87 may be something that has changed.

Thanks for the info. I'll check out a new edition. Here's a sample page of what I was talking about.

Ah, I see now. Yes, the naming convention is entirely different these days.

Yes the problem is the old book. The 1967 edition was a first start (It was better than Beistle) but it had a lot of problems. In it Overton assigned the numbers starting at 1 and running straight through the series not starting over again for each year. When he changed that in 1970, I believe he started each year with 101 so there would be no confusion between the old numbers and the new ones. Another problem he corrected can be seen in the page illustration above where he assigned a new variety number because of a difference in how the edge read. In the later book he realized this was cause by slippage in the Castaining machine or from not fully retracting the machine to its starting position. So all the edge variations were pulled out to their own section and do not determine the die variety.