Flowing Hair Half Dimes (1794–1795)

Scot's First Half Dime and What It Replaced

The 1792 half disme struck in John Harper's cellar had demonstrated that the new republic could produce silver coinage. What it had not established was a functioning Mint operating from its own buildings with its own press and engraver producing coins in systematic quantity. That task fell to Robert Scot, a Scottish-born engraver who had moved to Philadelphia and became in 1793 the first salaried Chief Engraver of the United States Mint. The half dimes Scot designed in 1794 were the first of the denomination struck at an actual Mint facility, part of a coherent program of silver coinage extending across multiple denominations simultaneously.¹

The spelling "disme" had by this time begun its quiet evolution toward "dime." The half dimes of 1794 and 1795 carry no denomination marking on either side. Citizens were expected to know the coin's value by its size and weight, because silver coins then passed on their metal content and the half dime circulated among foreign coins of varying sizes, compositions, and states of wear.

The Design: Liberty, Fifteen Stars, and a Small Eagle

Scot's half dime portrait shows Liberty facing right with hair flowing freely behind her neck and down her shoulders, close to the Liberty Cap portrait on the cents and half cents of 1794 but with the cap and pole removed to give the portrait a more classical, unadorned form. The obverse carries LIBERTY above the portrait and the date below, with fifteen six-pointed stars arranged eight to the left and seven to the right. The fifteen stars acknowledged the fifteen states then in the Union: the original thirteen plus Vermont, admitted 1791, and Kentucky, admitted 1792.²

The reverse shows what numismatists call the Small Eagle: a delicate bird perched amid an open wreath of two olive branches bound at the base, with UNITED STATES OF AMERICA around the full perimeter. The eagle in this early form carries none of the heraldic authority of the design that would replace it in 1800; it is a modest, almost tentative bird, consistent with the Mint's still-developing engraving capabilities. No half dime would carry an explicit five-cent statement until the Capped Bust design arrived in 1829.

The same Flowing Hair design with the Small Eagle reverse appeared across all three silver denominations struck in 1794 and 1795: the half dime, the half dollar, and the silver dollar. The Coinage Act of 1792 required the same devices on every silver denomination: an emblem of Liberty with the word LIBERTY and the date on the obverse, and an eagle with UNITED STATES OF AMERICA on the reverse. The half dime was the smallest expression of a design family that scaled to the silver dollar.

Dated 1794, Struck in 1795

The first half dimes, 7,756 pieces, were delivered on March 30, 1795, and most specialists treat that delivery as the whole 1794-dated issue, though die-state evidence suggests some 1794-dated coins were struck later in the year. The Mint prepared dies in advance, often dating them before production commenced, and the half dimes were no exception to a practice that affected most 1794-dated silver coinage. The silver dollar of 1794 is the significant exception: the Mint delivered 1,758 of them on October 15, 1794. The small March 1795 delivery makes the 1794 half dime much the scarcer of the two dates.³

The 1795-dated issues account for the remaining 78,660 pieces, making them three to four times as common in the surviving population as the 1794s. Both dates are scarce in absolute terms, and the two dates together account for only 86,416 half dimes.

Strike Quality and Adjustment Marks

The Mint struggled with the half dime's small diameter throughout the Flowing Hair period. On both dates, finding an example with fully defined hair above and below Liberty's ear, or with clear feather detail on the eagle's breast, requires deliberate searching. Many show flat centers that can mislead an inexperienced eye into reading striking weakness as circulation wear. Die cracks, common as the Mint's dies wore during production runs, further soften the strike on many 1795 examples.⁴

Adjustment marks are a standard feature of this series and of early American silver and gold coinage generally. The Coinage Act required that silver coins contain their full specified weight in metal; overweight planchets had to be reduced before striking. The Mint accomplished this by filing, leaving parallel striations on the high points of the finished coin. These marks were made before striking and are manufacturing characteristics, not damage. They appear as evenly spaced parallel lines in Liberty's hair or on the eagle's wings and breast, following the design contours. They are not deducted from grade and do not meaningfully affect value unless severe enough to obscure major design elements. A 1795 with light adjustment marks and undisturbed original surfaces is a better coin than a 1795 without adjustment marks that has been cleaned to remove them.

The Woodward Hoard and the Uncirculated Population

Around 1880, Massachusetts coin dealer William Elliot Woodward acquired and dispersed a hoard of approximately one hundred uncirculated examples of the Flowing Hair half dime, covering both dates. The bulk of original production entered commerce and circulated until worn to illegibility. Many of the uncirculated coins known today may descend from the Woodward dispersal. PCGS reports dozens of uncirculated 1794 half dimes in its population, a count that resubmissions inflate. For the 1795 PCGS reports more than 100 uncirculated examples, a ceiling for the same reason.⁵

Just under 1,500 Flowing Hair half dimes of both dates combined had been certified by 2025, and resubmissions mean the number of distinct coins is lower. The typical survivor is in Good to Fine, consistent with a coin that spent years in active commerce. Very Fine examples are meaningfully scarcer. Extremely Fine examples are scarcer still.

Die Varieties and the Reference Framework

Four die varieties are recognized for the 1794 half dime, and they differ widely in rarity. Ten die varieties are known for 1795, though more than 80 percent of surviving examples come from just three of those pairings. The remaining varieties are rare to very rare. Harold P. Newlin's 1883 monograph <em>A Classification of the Early Half Dimes of the United States</em> was the pioneering study. D.W. Valentine's 1931 The United States Half Dimes, published by the American Numismatic Society, built on it with a systematic die variety catalog. Jules Reiver later published a variety identification manual for the series. The current standard reference is Russell J. Logan and John W. McCloskey's Federal Half Dimes 1792–1837, published by the John Reich Collectors Society in 1998.⁶

In practice, almost all Flowing Hair half dimes are collected as type coins rather than by die variety. The combination of high prices, wide rarity differentials between varieties, and the difficulty of attributing worn early silver makes variety collecting in this series an undertaking for dedicated specialists. The edge is reeded, continuing the diagonally reeded edge of the 1792 half disme, and reeding remained standard on all subsequent half dime designs.

Why the Design Changed After Two Years

Contemporary commentary on the Flowing Hair coinage was not uniformly admiring. Critics found the Liberty portrait ungainly, lacking the refinement associated with European coin portraiture, and Mint Director Henry DeSaussure, who succeeded the ailing David Rittenhouse in July 1795, moved quickly to commission a redesign. The traditional account, first published by Mint Director James Ross Snowden in 1861 and widely repeated since, holds that DeSaussure engaged Gilbert Stuart, the most celebrated portrait painter in America, to provide a more refined model of Liberty. More recent scholarship has questioned the attribution, and some researchers regard Scot as the more likely source of the new portrait.⁷ What is not in dispute is that Scot cut the new Draped Bust portrait into dies that replaced the Flowing Hair image on the silver dollar late in 1795 and on the half dime and half dollar in 1796, when it also appeared on the first dimes and quarters, and that the half dime kept the Small Eagle reverse until 1800, when Scot's Heraldic Eagle replaced it.

Building the Set

For a type set, one Flowing Hair half dime in any grade sufficient to identify the design completes this entry in the half dime series. The 1795 is significantly more available than the 1794 and is the natural choice; Good and Fine examples are obtainable through specialist dealers and major auction houses, though even a Good 1795 lists at about $1,750. Retail price guides in 2026 list a 1795 at about $2,500 in Fine, $7,500 in Extremely Fine and $16,500 in MS-63. The Pogue Collection LM-10 1795, graded PCGS Mint State 67 (CAC) and one of the finest known, brought $176,250 at the Stack's Bowers and Sotheby's Pogue Part I sale in May 2015 and was offered again at GreatCollections in November 2020. The 1794 is substantially scarcer at every grade. The finest known 1794 half dimes have sold above $130,000 in regular-strike form; a 1794 Special Strike graded PCGS SP67 realized $367,775 at Heritage in October 2012.⁸

Authentication is essential. Counterfeits exist, and certain diagnostic characteristics appear consistently on fakes: raised lines near the letters BE in LIBERTY and near the digits 17 in the date are among the most frequently cited markers of altered or cast forgeries. Certification by PCGS or NGC is required before purchase at any significant price level. Adjustment marks are normal, and soft centers on both dates come from the strike rather than from wear.