1963 Franklin Half Dollars 1948-1963 MS66FBL

History

Mint Director Nellie Tayloe Ross admired a 1933 Franklin medal by Chief Engraver John R. Sinnock and directed him to prepare a coin design based on it, a commission handed down rather than opened to competition. Accounts place that instruction in either 1946 or 1947, but all agree Sinnock finished the obverse and reverse models only weeks before his death in May 1947, after wartime priorities had delayed the project. His successor, Gilroy Roberts, completed the final design, and the first coins were released in April 1948. Reception was cool, since the Franklin replaced the Walking Liberty half dollar that many already considered among the finest American coin designs, and 1963 brought the series to a close for both the business strike and the proof.

Details

John R. Sinnock is credited with both sides of the design, with John Frederick Lewis also named in the attribution used by the grading services. The Denver Mint struck over 65 million pieces in 1963, the largest output of any date in the series and roughly twenty-seven times the just under 2.5 million reported for the 1955 Philadelphia issue. The 1962-D carries the second highest mintage, so the two final Denver issues sit at the top of the series production range.

Features

The obverse portrait derives from the bust of Franklin carved by the eighteenth-century French sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon, with Sinnock's initials JRS placed at the cutoff of the shoulder. The reverse Liberty Bell is accompanied by a small eagle that exists for legal reasons rather than artistic ones, since statute required an eagle on the denomination. The Commission of Fine Arts objected to that diminutive bird. The Full Bell Lines designation applies to examples showing the lower horizontal lines on the bell complete and unbroken, a strike characteristic that separates the premium coins from the bulk of the mintage.

Notable facts

• Franklin himself objected to portraits of real people on coinage, and Ross is said to have replied that it was royal heads he objected to.
• Some had urged Ross to place Franklin on the cent because of his "a penny saved" maxim, but she chose the half dollar as better suited in size and silver content to the effect she wanted.
• The Franklin was the last circulating United States denomination to replace an allegorical Liberty with the portrait of an actual person.
• Sinnock's JRS initials fed a Cold War rumor that they honored Joseph Stalin, the same story that had attached to his Roosevelt dime.
• The 1963-D is very common in circulated grades and can still be found in original rolls up to about MS64.