1795 Half Milling

This is the recut date variety (2 leaves). It looks like that in hand. The date was first cut very low, then moved up. I used to collect bust halves.

First let me say "Great Coin!"

Then...I can only speculate about the milling. As I understand it, minting equipment and technique were quite crude in the late 18th century relative to today. As a result, a die might be misaligned...in this case the reverse die. If it was misaligned, one edge would be a bit lower, the opposite side would be a bit high. The planchet below the "high side" would end up weakly struck. That could account for the lack of milling in the strike.

Another thought...if the die became "filled" with debris/grease, it again would result in a significant loss in detail.

All speculation on my part...someone will come along who really knows the minting process and can give you a more definitive answer.

Thanks to everyone for the nice comments. I got out my old Overton book and actually looked at the guides to attribution. There he talks about smooth areas on the reverse of early halves and states these are caused by variations in the thickness of planchets from one side to the other. In other words, there was not enough metal to fill the die in that area. I don't know why I didn't think of that before. It can also happen on badly cracked dies. Why just the reverse? The reverse had less pressure applied than the obverse. This was probably just a result of how the early screw presses were designed. Obviously, uniformity of the impression was not the goal.