1937 Silver Commemoratives MS65

History

Arkansas entered the Union in 1836, and the state's Honorary Centennial Celebration Commission, later renamed the Arkansas Centennial Commission, sought federal coinage to help pay for the Little Rock festivities planned for 1936. The act of May 14, 1934 authorized up to 500,000 half dollars, and the first pieces were struck at Philadelphia in May 1935, with reissues following annually through 1939. The initial 10,000 Philadelphia coins sold at $1 and were followed by 3,000 more, after which small branch-mint mintages were ordered on the advice of dealer B. Max Mehl, who had pre-sold nearly all of them and retailed the coins at $2.75. By 1937 the centennial itself had passed, and the year's three issues existed to be sold to collectors as annual sets at rising markups, a practice that contributed to Congressional hostility toward the commemorative program.

Details

Edward Everett Burr, a Little Rock artist who won the Commission's design competition, is credited with both sides, and Emily Bates modeled his sketches for the Mint. The coins were struck in the standard alloy of 90 percent silver and 10 percent copper, weighing 12.50 grams with an actual silver weight of 0.3617 troy ounce, on a 30.6 mm planchet. Philadelphia struck 5,505 pieces in 1937 without a mint mark, while Denver produced 5,505 and San Francisco 5,506 to the same designs. Published mintages for the series are net figures and exclude coins melted at the Mint.

Features

The head side pairs the conjoined profiles of a Native American chief in a feathered headdress with Liberty in a Phrygian cap, both facing left, the centennial dates in the lower left field and ARKANSAS CENTENNIAL along the bottom. Contemporary explanations held that the chief represented 1836 and the young woman the modern era, and some accounts identify him as Quapaw. The eagle side shows a bird with outstretched wings facing right, perched on a rising sun and holding a ribbon in its beak inscribed IN GOD WE TRUST and E PLURIBUS UNUM, with three stars above it and the upper outline of a diamond set with 13 stars behind, an arrangement adapted from the Arkansas state flag, a single star above ARKANSAS, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA above and the denomination below. Because the centennial dates 1836 and 1936 are fixed elements of the design, a coin struck in 1937 carries dates that are not its year of issue.

Notable facts

• Of the 500,000 half dollars authorized for the Arkansas centennial, the American Numismatic Association reports 95,300 struck for sale and 9,600 returned to the Mint.
• Mintages fell every year of the run, from 13,012 at Philadelphia in 1935 to 3,156 in 1938 and 2,104 in 1939, making the final year the series key.
• The odd trailing digits in figures such as 5,505 and 5,506 represent assay coins withheld for testing and later destroyed, so slightly fewer pieces reached the public than the catalog mintages suggest.
• The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts rejected Burr's sketch as unsuitable for a United States coin and asked for entirely new work, but Senator Hattie Caraway intervened and sculptor Lee Lawrie supplied corrections, and the design went forward substantially as Burr conceived it.
• Toning carries an unusually wide premium in this series: a 1937-D graded MS-67 with gold and purple bands realized $2,820 at auction while a virtually untoned example in the same numeric grade brought $1,410.