1792 Half Disme To Be Graded

WOW billjones, I'm loving seeing your posts here at CCF! Thank you first, for sharing these great coins, between you and Germanicvs I believe you two have the coolest old US coins I've seen in a long while (besides the Pogue collection).

In an old fatty NGC slab, I'd guess F15 with a good upshot of making it into a VF20/25 holder today.

What a wonderful piece of history, I can certainly understand why it's your avatar.

NGC graded this VF-30.

There are about 325, 1792 Half Dismes that have survived from the generally accepted mint of 1,500.** That is a much higher than average survival rate for a coin from that era. That works out to be about 21.6% of the initial mintage. The baseline survival rate is about 1% of the initial mintage barring any unusual hoards. This is an indicator that many of these coins were saved as souvenirs

Among those survivors are many pieces that are holed, bent and otherwise damaged. Indeed it is difficult to find these coins without defects. In a current issue of " Coin World" a well-known dealer is offering a certified 1792 Half Disme that is PCGS graded Fine details, bent. Because of the bending much of the reverse detail is gone. The asking price is $23,700. This dealer says that previously he sold one with a hole for $20,000.

On the other end of the spectrum there are about 20 examples known in Mint State. I have seen five of them included a remarkable piece in MS-67. There is said to one "specimen striking" which is sold for as much as $1.4 million.

This coin has been called the desirable piece of small silver in the U.S. series. I think that is an accurate description of it.

** "Coin Facts" numbers are 275 survivors with 35 Mint State pieces. The "Mint State" number might be influenced by grading service "grade-flation" in my opinion.

FASCINATING coin!! Thank you very much for posting it!

There are more of these coins around that you might think. The trouble is some collectors choose not to count them. When I was looking for one in the 1980s and early '90, they were around bent, holed or otherwise messed up.

A Boston dealer had one he carried around in his pocket in a kointain for several months. It had F-VF sharpness, but was holed. I asked him to sell it to me, but he won't. I'm a believer that everything is met to be because I ended up with the piece you see here, after saving money for a while. I've had many similar collecting experiences over the last 40 years. If I'd bought the one with the hole, that might have been it. At any rate he said he lost the coin in the woods so that's one less for the overall population.

As for the number pieces, my 300 estimate is based on my experiences plus the rarity rating in the Logan and McCloskey book which rates the coin as an R-3. They say 200 to 300 pieces have survived.