1805 Draped Bust Half Dollar - 1805/4

Coin Details

Auction Record

Description

This is the 1805/4 overdate variety of the 1805 Draped Bust Half Dollar. Dies were expensive, and a serviceable die left over at the end of a year was often kept and re-dated rather than destroyed: the new digits were punched directly over the old ones. The earlier date survives underneath wherever its strokes fall outside the digits punched over it, which is why an overdate is read from the shapes that do not belong to the date as printed. The effect is in the die, so every coin struck from it carries the same remnant in the same position. Any mintage given below counts the entire issue for this date and mint, not this variety: a variety comes from one die or a few, and how many coins they struck was never separately recorded. The 1805 Draped Bust Half Dollar - 1805/4, struck at the Philadelphia Mint, is part of the Draped Bust Half Dollars 1796-1807 collection. The 1805 Draped Bust Half Dollar issue as a whole had a mintage of 211,722; how many coins carry this variety is unknown. The obverse features Liberty facing right with draped bust and ribbon-bound hair, a portrait traditionally credited to Gilbert Stuart, and the reverse displays a heraldic eagle, shield on breast, gripping an olive branch and a bundle of arrows, with the motto E PLURIBUS UNUM on a scroll in its beak. Multiple die varieties. Two of the 1805 obverse dies are overdates, 5 over 4. Struck in 89.2% silver, 10.8% copper, weighing 13.48 grams, 32.5 mm in diameter, with a lettered: fifty cents or half a dollar edge. Cataloged as PCGS #6070.