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 s persisted in official usage through the early years of Mint production but was being dropped in common speech, and 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, a convention that reflected both the era's reliance on intrinsic metallic value and the practical chaos of a monetary environment still flooded with 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, adapted from Joseph Wright's right-facing Liberty head produced for the 1793 cent, with the Phrygian cap 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 palm 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. Nothing on either side identifies the denomination. 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 Mint's policy required a unified visual language across the silver series, presenting a coherent national coinage to both domestic commerce and foreign trading partners. The half dime was the smallest expression of a design family that scaled to the silver dollar.

All 1794 Half Dimes Were Struck in 1795

Contemporary research has established that all 7,756 half dimes bearing the date 1794 were actually struck in March 1795, several months after the calendar year for which they were dated. 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: it was struck in October 1794 in a deliberate ceremony marking the Mint's first production of the nation's primary monetary unit. The 1794 half dime's modest quantity and dating anomaly have not diminished its significance; the rarity that results from its small production makes each example more consequential, not less.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 series represents one of the smallest production runs of any United States regular coinage type.

Strike Quality and Adjustment Marks

The Mint struggled with the half dime's small diameter throughout the Flowing Hair period. The 1794 coins show the sharpest evidence of these difficulties: 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. The 1795 coins strike somewhat more crisply but still frequently 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. Without this hoard, the survival rate for uncirculated examples of either date would be almost negligible; the bulk of original production entered commerce and circulated until worn to illegibility. The Woodward dispersal is the primary reason that any choice uncirculated coins exist for this type today. About a dozen 1794 examples are known in truly uncirculated condition, nearly all traceable to or consistent with the hoard. The 1795 uncirculated population is somewhat larger but still measured in dozens rather than hundreds.⁵

Fewer than 1,500 Flowing Hair half dimes of both dates combined have been certified by the major grading services, making this one of the smaller certified populations for any recognized United States regular coinage type. 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 is rare. About Uncirculated is rare enough that individual examples at that level tend to be known to specialists.

Die Varieties and the Reference Framework

Approximately four die varieties are recognized for the 1794 half dime, of which only one is considered relatively common. 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 The Early Half Dimes of the United States 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 in 1984 developed a refined identification system keyed to Valentine's work. 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, a departure from the plain edge of the 1792 half disme and a standard feature of 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: numismatic historian R.W. Julian notes that DeSaussure had only just arrived in Philadelphia when the new design was submitted in August 1795 and would have had little time to identify and engage Stuart; Julian places greater likelihood on the possibility that Stuart's involvement was arranged before DeSaussure took office, perhaps at Washington's initiative, or that Scot himself was more central to the design than the Stuart story implies.⁷ What is not in dispute is that the new Draped Bust portrait was adapted by Scot into dies that replaced the Flowing Hair image on the half dime, dime, quarter, and half dollar beginning in 1796, and that the Small Eagle reverse continued with the new obverse 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 at prices that reflect genuine rarity rather than common availability. A Fine 1795 typically commands several thousand dollars; Extremely Fine examples start well above that, and choice uncirculated pieces occupy a different tier entirely. The auction record for the 1795 stands at $201,138, realized at GreatCollections in November 2020 by the Pogue Collection LM-10 example graded PCGS Mint State 67 (CAC), the same coin that had established the prior record of $176,250 at the Stack's Bowers Pogue Part I sale in May 2015. The 1794 is substantially scarcer at every grade. The finest known 1794 half dimes have sold above $300,000: a Stack's Bowers example in the D. Brent Pogue Part I sale realized $305,500.⁸

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. Soft centers on both dates are a striking characteristic, not a grading problem. The population of genuine choice examples is small enough that condition and originality dominate every purchasing decision in this series.