Franklin Half Dollar

History

The Act of September 26, 1890 allowed the Treasury to replace a coin design on its own authority after 25 years of use, which made the Walking Liberty half dollar, introduced in 1916, eligible for replacement in 1941. World War II pushed the change into the postwar years. Mint Director Nellie Tayloe Ross admired Benjamin Franklin and directed Chief Engraver John R. Sinnock to prepare designs, having seen his Franklin portrait on a 1933 medal; Ross reasoned that since Franklin already appeared on the $100 bill, a coin the average citizen handled more often made sense. Sinnock died on May 14, 1947 at age 58, weeks after completing the models, and his assistant and successor Gilroy Roberts finished the engraving work. The Commission of Fine Arts objected to the reverse, with Chairman Gilmore Clarke writing to Ross on December 1, 1947 to praise the Franklin head while criticizing the diminutive eagle and the prominent crack in the Liberty Bell, and the Mint proceeded regardless. Production ran from 1948 through 1963 with no suspension or redesign, and the Kennedy half dollar followed in 1964.

Details

John R. Sinnock designed the obverse, with the reverse credited to Sinnock with participation by Gilroy Roberts and adapted from the Liberty Bell of the 1926 Sesquicentennial commemorative half dollar; PCGS carries the designer credit as John R. Sinnock and John Frederick Lewis. The alloy was 90 percent silver and 10 percent copper for the entire run, with no conversion to copper-nickel clad, giving each coin 0.36169 troy ounce of silver at a weight of 12.50 grams. Diameter is 30.61 mm, thickness 1.8 mm, and the edge is reeded. Philadelphia struck without a mint mark while Denver used D and San Francisco used S. Business strikes for the series total 465,814,455 and proofs total 15,886,955, with proof coinage running from 1950 through 1963; the lowest proof mintage came in 1950 and the highest in 1962. Individual date mintages span roughly 2.5 million to about 67 million, the high being 1963-D at 67,069,292.

Features

The obverse carries a bust of Franklin facing right, modeled after the Jean-Antoine Houdon bust, with LIBERTY above, IN GOD WE TRUST below and the date at right. Sinnock's JRS initials sit at the truncation of the shoulder, the same initials that fed a Cold War rumor, as on the Roosevelt dime, that they referenced Joseph Stalin. The reverse shows the Liberty Bell with its crack rendered and a small eagle at right, included only to satisfy the statutory requirement that half dollars bear an eagle, with UNITED STATES OF AMERICA above and HALF DOLLAR below. Mint marks appear on the reverse above the yoke of the bell, below the E in STATES. No motto was added, removed or relocated across the sixteen years of production. The recognized major variety is the 1955 Bugs Bunny, FS-401, which PCGS lists separately in both plain and Full Bell Lines versions.

Notable facts

• Franklin was the first historical portrait to appear on a circulating United States half dollar, replacing the allegorical Liberty figures used before it.
• Full Bell Lines requires the lower set of two horizontal lines at the base of the bell to be complete and unbroken by marks, and NGC additionally requires the upper set of three lines to be complete.
• PCGS considers the 1953-S with Full Bell Lines the key coin of the entire circulation-strike series, reporting fewer than 50 known from a mintage above 4 million.
• Reported mintages for the low-mintage 1955 Philadelphia issue range from 2,498,181 to 2,876,381.
• Cameo proofs, early strikes with frosted devices, turn up in some proof sets and bring a premium over ordinary proofs.
• Extensive melting for silver content has left certain dates scarcer in the market than their original mintages would suggest.
• A 1955 graded MS67 with Full Bell Lines brought $14,100 at auction in January 2016.