THE HISTORY OF THE 1792 HALF DISME

A MORE ACCURATE HISTORY OF THE 1792 HALF DISME

A tale of three sources, two strikes and one president.

The first 1,500 coins of the infant United States Mint came off the press in the late-18th century and almost immediately disappeared from view. Centuries after its modest debut, that revolutionary emission—the 1792 half disme—is shrouded in mystery: Was it struck at the Philadelphia Mint or in the cellar of a mint contractor? Was it produced in Summer 1792, prior to the mint's opening, or in October of that year, after operations began? Were the half dismes meant to be patterns to secure design approval, or were they business strikes, intended for circulation? Who provided the bullion for their production, President George Washington or someone lesser known? If it was Washington, did he donate his personal silverware or silver bullion in some other form?

Two seemingly authoritative sources that surfaced during the mid-19th century provided answers to these questions. They corroborated some assertions and contradicted others. Inevitably, collectors, dealers and scholars chose sides and argued for 150 years about which source was more credible and which story was more plausible. Unbeknownst to these bickering numismatists, however, the definitive answers to these vexing questions were recorded by a third and very reliable source. Information from that reference dribbled out slowly between 1966 and 2003, and glimpses of the story emerged. However, it was not until we thoroughly examined this third source that a more accurate history of the half disme could, for the first time, be revealed. The “extended version” of that history, along with that of the other 1792-dated coins, appear in our book 1792: Birth of a Nation's Coinage, published in 2017 by the Ivy Press, a subsidiary of Heritage Auctions.

The story of the half disme begins with its obscure gestation, striking and distribution. When it was struck in 1792, hardly anyone took notice. No announcement was made, no “first strike” ceremony was recorded, and not a single newspaper in Philadelphia, or anywhere else, covered the story. Modest in appearance and comparatively few in number, the half dismes vanished from the scene just as quietly as they arrived.

Over the next 40 years, pioneering coin collectors encountered, every now and again, tiny silver U.S. 5-cent pieces that carried the peculiar word “disme.” They wondered about the whys and wherefores of these enigmatic coins, but in the early 1830s, numismatic knowledge was sparse. No books or magazines focused on American coins; no coin clubs existed; written records were scattered; and collectors toiled in isolation. An enterprising numismatist might have contacted mint personnel to seek information, but by the early 1830s, all of the men who had worked on the first federal coinage of 1792 were long since dead, leaving only the faintest of paper trails.

The first collectors who added half dismes to their cabinets, therefore, could only admire them in wonderment. A few were more proactive. In 1838, for instance, William G. Stearns of Boston wrote to Mint Director Robert M. Patterson, asking for a detailed description of the all-but mythical 1792 half disme. Patterson obliged by sending basic information about the piece, but enclosed no illustration.

At the end of the 1830s, at long last, the flywheel of numismatic knowledge slowly started to turn. In 1839 the Reverend Joseph B. Felt wrote the first American book with significant numismatic content, An Historical Account of the Massachusetts Coinage. Three years later, U.S. Mint Assayers Jacob B. Eckfeldt and William E. Dubois produced A Manual of Gold and Silver Coins of All Nations, featuring engraved illustrations. Half dismes had disappeared from circulation by 1842, so the manual did not mention them. Dubois was back in print in 1846 with Pledges of History, a guide to the mint's coin cabinet. He was the first author to mention the 1792 half disme, thus confirming its genuineness, but since the book was not illustrated, collectors still wondered what the piece looked like.

Finally, in 1857, as coin collecting was experiencing a boom, Norton's Literary Letter (a periodical for bibliophiles) published the first engraving of this petite 5-cent piece. And, 67 years after the half dismes were struck, Dr. Montroville Wilson Dickeson, the “Indiana Jones” of his day, wrote the first comprehensive guide to the hobby, The American Numismatical Manual. Quaint though Dickeson's spelling might have been, his technology was fairly sophisticated, for his book included 19 plates of tinted facsimile illustrations, including a half disme. Collectors at last had basic information and images for reference.

To read the complete article, see:
A MORE ACCURATE HISTORY OF THE 1792 HALF DISME (https://blog.money.org/coin-collecting/history-of-the-1792-disme)

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