1/2 Dime - 'Seated Liberty Half Dime' obverse legend

The 1860 design change that added the obverse legend displaced the thirteen stars that had surrounded Liberty since 1837, a modification driven partly by aesthetic preference and partly by a desire to bring the half dime's obverse into visual alignment with the newly redesigned dime. Production continued through the Civil War years, during which silver coins vanished almost entirely from circulation as hoarding spiked following the suspension of specie payments in late 1861 — most examples from 1862 through 1865 went straight from the mint into speculators' hands.

Congress abolished the denomination with the Coinage Act of 1873, replaced in function by the nickel five-cent piece already in wide circulation since 1866.