Early Half Dollar Checklist — the 39-issue date-and-type set

Your early-half-dollar set

Every date and type of the series — 39 in all, from a delivery of 5,300 pieces in December 1794 to the 6,546,200 of 1836. Tick what you own; everything saves privately in this browser, no account required.

Before you read the table

That column says DELIVERED, not MINTAGE

The United States Mint never recorded how many coins of a given date it struck. It recorded how many coins the Chief Coiner delivered to the Treasurer within a calendar year — and it printed the warning itself. For most of this series the two happen to agree: from 1801 to 1836, with two exceptions, the mintage the trade prints IS the Mint's delivery figure, unmodified.

35 of the 39 rows carry a figure and 4 show “—”. The blanks are not missing research. 1796 and 1797 share one recorded delivery of 3,918 pieces and no record splits them; the two designs of 1807 share one delivery of 1,051,576 and no record splits them. Each issue page carries both the recorded delivery and the trade's dated attribution, labelled with who made it.

Watch two rows in particular

1803 shows 31,715 where the price guides show 188,234 — the difference is the 1804 delivery, silently added to the 1803 date.

1815 shows 47,150 against the year 1816, because that is when they were delivered. The Mint delivered no half dollars at all in calendar 1815.

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The 39-issue checklist

0 / 39

Owned · 0%

Keys owned

Pre-1807

0.0

oz silver

	Mint		Class	Market	Note
1794	P	5,300	KEY DATE	—	Delivered December 1, 1794 — the Mint's second silver delivery ever. The published 23,464 is a date-attribution estimate, not a Mint figure: 23,464 + 299,680 for 1795 sums to the combined record of 323,144. Eleven die pairings were needed to strike 5,300 coins.
1795	P	317,844	PRE-1807	—	The balance of the combined 1794–1795 delivery of 323,144 after Snowden's 5,300 — OunceDesk arithmetic, not a Mint line item. Five separately catalogued major varieties sit inside the date: Recut Date 3 Leaves, Recut Date 2 Leaves, Small Head, A over E in STATES, and a Silver Plug.
1796	P	—	KEY DATE	—	The registry's row runs 29 November 1796 to December 1797 and gives one combined figure of 3,918. Read literally it says there were no half dollars of 1796 at all. The trade splits the 3,918 as 934 and 2,984, and the two sum exactly to the record. PCGS publishes no plain-date survival estimate: the 15 Stars is 75 / 5 / 0 at R-8.2 and the 16 Stars 40 / 2 / 1 at R-8.7.
1797	P	—	KEY DATE	—	Combined with 1796 in the record's single row of 3,918. The trade's 2,984 is the balance of the 934 it allocates to 1796.
1801	P	30,289	PRE-1807	—	An exact match between the delivery of record and the published mintage — as every date from 1801 to 1836 is, with two exceptions. The first half dollars after a three-year gap in which the Mint delivered none at all.
1802	P	29,890	PRE-1807	—	Delivered in two quarters only: 7,910 in March and 21,980 in December. Exact match between record and published mintage.
1803	P	31,715	PRE-1807	—	The series' live fossil. The Mint's own abstract for calendar 1803 gives 31,715, all of it in the September quarter. PCGS carries 188,234 on both the Large 3 and the Small 3 — and 31,715 + 156,519 (the 1804 delivery) = 188,234 exactly. Survival by variety: Large 3 1,000 / 6 / 0 at R-5.0; Small 3 300 / 2 / 0 at R-6.4.
1805	P	211,722	PRE-1807	—	The year the Mint decided to coin half dollars in preference to dollars — a decision recorded twenty-one years later in the Director's report for 1826. The 1805/4 overdate (500 / 3 / 2 at R-6.0) is the evidence Crosby used in 1891 to argue that 1804 half dollars must exist.
1806	P	839,576	PRE-1807	—	Six major varieties share a single recorded delivery, and their rarities are two orders of magnitude apart: Knob 6 No Stem at 5 known (R-9.7) against Pointed 6 Stem at 2,500 / 100 / 12 (R-4.5). PCGS publishes no plain-date estimate for 1806 — the date is not the unit here.
1807 Draped Bust	P	—	PRE-1807	—	1,051,576 half dollars were delivered in calendar 1807 across both designs; no record splits them. The trade's 301,076 / 750,500 partition traces to Snowden reading the Mint's books in 1860, and it closes exactly on the delivery of record.
1807 Capped Bust	P	—	WORKHORSE	—	John Reich's first year, and the design that carries the series for thirty years. Included in the same 1,051,576 delivery as the Draped Bust coins. PCGS publishes no plain-date estimate: Small Stars is 600 / 10 / 2 at R-5.8 and Large Stars 450 / 6 / 0 at R-6.1.
1808	P	1,368,600	WORKHORSE	—	The first full year of the Capped Bust design. The 1808/7 overdate runs 1,200 / 30 / 4 at R-4.9.
1809	P	1,405,810	WORKHORSE	—	The date that proves the edge is an attribution axis in its own right. PCGS treats the XXX Edge (400 / 8 / 0, R-6.2) and the III Edge (900 / 10 / 0, R-5.2) as separate major varieties with different rarity — a distinction the early dollars barely have. No plain-date estimate is published.
1810	P	1,276,276	WORKHORSE	—
1811	P	1,203,644	WORKHORSE	—	The “18.11” punctuated date (Overton O-110) is famous inside the Bust Half Nut Club and is NOT on PCGS's major-variety list for 1811 — the clearest demonstration in the series that the commercial variety list and the Overton die-marriage list are different objects. PCGS publishes no plain-date estimate; the 1811/10 runs 1,000 / 15 / 1 at R-5.0.
1812	P	1,628,059	WORKHORSE	—
1813	P	1,241,903	WORKHORSE	—	The 50C/UNI — the denomination punched over UNI(TED) — runs 750 / 30 / 4 at R-5.5.
1814	P	1,039,075	WORKHORSE	—	The last year before the gap. The 1814/3 runs 1,000 / 20 / 3 at R-5.0.
1815	P	47,150	KEY DATE	—	The Mint delivered NO half dollars in calendar 1815. These 47,150 coins were delivered in calendar 1816, from dies dated 1815 overcut on 1812 dies — and the whole of 1816 after the fire of January 11 produced nothing more. The published “1815 mintage: 47,150” is a date attribution, and a good one. It is not a Mint figure for the year 1815.
1817	P	1,215,567	WORKHORSE	—	A 1.2-million-piece year that contains the rarest object in the series: the 1817/4, ten or eleven known, PCGS mintage “N/A”. Coinage resumed about the beginning of May after the fire repairs.
1818	P	1,960,322	WORKHORSE	—
1819	P	2,208,000	WORKHORSE	—	The lowest implied survival floor in the series — roughly 0.09% of the delivery, against 0.15–0.38% either side of it.
1820	P	751,122	WORKHORSE	—	The Mint's smallest half-dollar year of the Capped Bust era, and Patterson explained it as an operations problem rather than a policy one: the year's coinage “has, in fact, been the work of no more than nine months” for want of deposits. PCGS publishes no plain-date estimate; the 1820/19 Curl Base 2 runs 800 / 20 / 4 at R-5.4.
1821	P	1,305,797	WORKHORSE	—
1822	P	1,559,573	WORKHORSE	—	The 1822/1 runs 1,000 / 40 / 2 at R-5.0, with an auction record of $69,000 for an MS65+ in July 2025.
1823	P	1,694,200	WORKHORSE	—	The year Director Patterson noticed where the silver was coming from: of the bullion deposited, “that brought from Mexico & S. America amounted to no less than 766,000 dollars.” The American half dollar was mostly melted Latin American silver.
1824	P	3,504,954	WORKHORSE	—	The only silver denomination the Mint struck in 1824 — 3,504,954 half dollars and nothing else. The “Over Various Dates” variety is the one where the undertype is genuinely ambiguous and the trade gave up naming it: 1,000 / 60 / 1 at R-5.0.
1825	P	2,943,166	WORKHORSE	—
1826	P	4,004,180	WORKHORSE	—	Again the entire silver coinage of the year. Director Samuel Moore's report of January 1, 1827 explains both why — silver deposits “has induced the coinage, exclusively, [of] half dollars”, leaving small change to “the accustomed fractions of the Spanish dollar” — and what for: “large emissions of our heavier coinage… constituting an efficient basis of the national currency.” The high-grade tail here is the hoard signature.
1827	P	5,493,400	WORKHORSE	—	PCGS publishes no plain-date estimate. The 1827/6 runs 1,200 / 70 / 3 at R-4.9.
1828	P	3,075,200	WORKHORSE	—	PCGS publishes no plain-date estimate for 1828.
1829	P	3,712,156	WORKHORSE	—	The most obtainable date in the series on PCGS's estimates — 10,000 survivors across all grades at R-3.0. If a collector is buying one early half dollar, this is the date that gives the most coin for the money. The 1829/7 runs 1,750 / 75 / 4 at R-4.7.
1830	P	4,764,800	WORKHORSE	—	PCGS publishes no plain-date estimate for 1830.
1831	P	5,873,660	WORKHORSE	—	One of the two dates whose high-grade tail is unmistakably a hoard signature: 750 estimated in 60-or-better and 50 in 65-or-better, against 100 and 7 for 1819.
1832	P	4,797,000	WORKHORSE	—	PCGS publishes no plain-date estimate for 1832.
1833	P	5,206,000	WORKHORSE	—	The first of the three years for which PCGS separately catalogues a “Crushed Lettered Edge” proof. OunceDesk has done no independent work on the proofs of this series and treats them as secondary.
1834	P	6,412,004	WORKHORSE	—	The year the Act of June 28 reduced the gold content of American gold coin, left silver undervalued at the Mint, and started the nineteen-year melt that consumed this series. PCGS publishes no plain-date estimate for 1834.
1835	P	5,352,006	WORKHORSE	—	Robert Maskell Patterson takes office and reports that “new machines are nearly completed by which these operations will be executed with steam power.” The series has one year left.
1836	P	6,546,200	WORKHORSE	—	The record is one line covering lettered edge and reeded edge together: 6,546,200. The trade splits it 6,545,000 lettered and 1,200 reeded, and the two sum exactly. This series ends inside a date, and the Mint drew the line itself — the first steam coinage in America on March 23, 1836, steam milling, and dies hubbed entire so as to make them “exact fac-similes of one another.” PCGS publishes no plain-date estimate; the 50/00 runs 600 / 20 / 2 at R-5.8.

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Certified examples of the dates you still need

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Live eBay listings for graded examples of dates not ticked on your checklist — raw coins are excluded. Asking prices set by sellers, not our valuations and not realised sales. Your checklist stays in this browser; we never see it. Links are affiliate links.

There is no melt column here. Every early half dollar contains the same 185⅝ grains of pure silver by statute, on a standard the Act of January 18, 1837 replaced — and nobody sells one for its metal. A live price would be the same number on all thirty-nine rows and a floor under none of them. The statutory silver content is on every issue page, where it belongs, as a specification.

Using the checklist well

Understand the shape before you start. Sort by Delivered and the series splits itself in two. Thirteen calendar years produced 1,626,773 half dollars between them — 1.93% of the series — and four of those years produced none at all. The remaining thirty years produced 82,641,400. That is not a gentle gradient; it is a cliff at 1807, and it governs both the price of a date set and how long one takes.

Treat 1807 as two coins. The Draped Bust and the Capped Bust were both struck in calendar 1807 and both counted in the same recorded delivery, so a date set needs one 1807 and a date-and-type set needs two. This is why both 1807 rows show no delivery figure.

Filter PRE-1807 to see the hard half. Those are the Flowing Hair and Draped Bust issues — two per cent of the pieces and a much larger share of the difficulty and the money. The Bust Half Nut Club's own membership rules concede that this is a different pursuit, by lowering the bar from a hundred die marriages to thirty for a candidate who collects only these types.

Then go one level deeper, because the date is not the unit. A completed date-and-type set of this series is the beginning, not the end. 1806 is one recorded delivery containing a variety of which five coins are known and another of which 2,500 are; 1817 is a 1,215,567-piece year containing a marriage of which ten survive. The collecting unit the market actually trades is the Overton die marriage — see die marriages & attribution.

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What actually fits an early half dollar

32.5 mm

Capsule

Air-Tite I, 33 mm ring

Rings come in whole millimetres; 32.5 mm sits between sizes and takes the next one up

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2x2 flip

Large Dollar (1.5")

Mylar window, never soft vinyl

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Album

Dansco 6151

Early Half Dollars 1794–1839 (two-volume set)

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Tube

Not recommended

Too wide for a half-dollar tube — use 2.5x2.5 flips or capsules

Measure before you buy. Diameter was never fixed by statute, and the open collar means it varies coin to coin — surviving halves run roughly 32–33 mm. At 32.5 mm nominal this type already sits between ring sizes, so measure yours before ordering rather than trusting the table.

Derived from the coin's diameter against Air-Tite's published model chart — the full table, the materials grades and the six things that destroy coins are in the Supply Room. Ordered by fit and archival safety, never by commission. Product links are affiliate links; what they pay has no input into what appears here or in what order.

Sources

OBSERVED

76 sources

ESTIMATED

1 source

DERIVED

2 sources

Sourced figures on this page trace to the ledger below. Editorial judgement is labelled as ours, and prices we have not sourced are not published.

View all sources & evidence methodology →

Continue: key dates & survival collecting pathways die marriages series overview

Delivery figures come from the Mint's own contemporaneous report for each calendar year — thirty-six of them, cited individually in the ledger. The 1795 figure is OunceDesk arithmetic over the combined 1794–1795 record and is flagged DERIVED wherever it appears. Dated attributions are PCGS CoinFacts' (S61), observed 2026-08-23, and are never merged with the delivery record.