1806 Draped Bust Half Dollar
Pointed 6, No Stem
Only two varieties of 1806 half dollars use a reverse with no stem through the eagle’s claw, O-109 and the extremely rare O-108. This variety appears to have been first published in the so-called “Haseltine Type Table,” an 1881 auction by John Haseltine that was published as a monograph, thereafter serving as the first listing of die varieties of quarter dollars, half dollars, and silver dollars. The collection was built by J. Colvin Randall, a Philadelphia numismatist, and it was Randall who wrote the Type Table, despite Haseltine’s claims of authorship. Randall owned a specimen he called Uncirculated. His idea that the variety was extremely rare has been modified by later discoveries, as collecting half dollars by variety has become a popular pastime in the 20th and 21st centuries.
The example to the left was sold by Stack's Bowers Galleries in the D. Brent Pogue Part I Auction, where it realized $129,250.