1837 50C Reeded Edge Capped Bust Half Dollar

Ron Guth

The 1837 Half Dollar is a relatively common coin and it is the most available date of the Capped Bust Reeded Edge type (if one goes only by mintage).  However, it is the only common date of the "50 Cents" sub-type.  The quality of surviving 1837 Half Dollars is rather high and the PCGS CoinFacts Condition Census is filled with MS66 examples.  Unfortunately, the Reeded Edge Half Dollars have been in a sort of limbo for many years.  They were left out of Overton's study of Half Dollar varieties from 1794-1836 and no one paid much attention to them except as type coins.  That all changed in 2012 when Dick Graham published "A Registry of Die Varieties of Reeded Edge Half Dollars."  Mr. Graham identified 25 different die varieties of the 1837 Half Dollars, some of which turned out to be quite rare.  In the intervening years, more and more collectors have embraced this date and the challenges presented by attempting to obtain each of the different die varieties.

As far as quality goes, one of the finest 1837 Half Dollars is the D. Brent Pogue example that sold in May 2016 as a PCGS MS67 for a record price of $111,625.