Themarathon trip thus turned into a long weekend vacation,which included some time at the American NumismaticSociety, where I was able to review the literaturerelated to Liberty Seated half dimes.

The action begins in 1883, with Harold P.Newlin's A Classification of the Early Half-Dimes ofthe United States. Published by John Haseltine inPhiladelphia, this volume was a natural extension ofHaseltine's earlier (1881) Type Table, which enumerateddie varieties of silver dollars, halves, and quarters.

The Type Table, while a starting point, did notcomprehensively cover the Liberty Seated varieties,and, sad to say, Newlin did not do much better. Nordid he even make the pretense - "I do not propose togive all the varieties of the later Half-dimes," hewrote, "for there are many, and differ so little, that itwould make this article too voluminous. I leave thisfield for those, who, I hope, will write more at lengthupon this subject, and will content myself by namingonly a few of the important varieties." And that isprecisely what he did, confining discussion of LibertySeated half dimes to the major design types. Withprinting limited to one hundred copies, the Newlinwork is thus a more appealing item to the literaturespecialist, than to the collector attempting seated half dime attribution.

The record goes silent until 1927, when WillW. Neil published a short article in the August, 1927Numismatist, followed with an addenda in the Decemberissue noting a few later discoveries. Neil'seffort is the first serious attempt at scaling the LibertySeated half dime variety summit.

He gives descriptionsof about a hundred varieties, perhaps reachingonly the base camp but at least getting started. Thereare no plates here, and like the Beistle half dollarstudy of the same period, this is problematic for thecollector. Some of these varieties are hard to attributeeven with plates!