1916-D 50C Walking Liberty Half Dollar PCGS MS64 (CAC)

      We are offering a quite dramatic piece of numismatic art for you to include in your collection: the 1916-D Walking Liberty half dollar. This mint state offering is a striking example of a popular first year-of-issue type coin. This specimen is from the opening year of the famous Walking Liberty series; examples from the year of a coin's debut are typically much admired and coveted by collectors. NGC Coin Explorer tells us, "1916-D half dollars are generally well struck, better so overall than those of Philadelphia and San Francisco Mints. They make ideal type coins to illustrate this design as it debuted." This first year-of-issue type coin would be perfect in a type set of U.S. half dollars or a full set of mint state Walking Liberty half dollars.

      Renowned numismatic art critic and scholar Cornelius Vermeule writes of this beautiful coin, "The Liberty Walking half dollar ... really treat[s] the obverse and reverse as a surface sculptural ensemble. The Liberty Walking design particularly gives the true feeling for breadth and sculptural surfaces on the scale of a coin. These surfaces are formal, like a well-carved marble or precisely cast bronze relief for a war memorial .... the rising sun amid landscape anchors the motion of Liberty, her olive branch, and her starry cloak. On the reverse, the eagle standing on rocks with a gnarled tree at the left dominates but does not overwhelm the design. The working of the feathers is a miraculous coup de force ....

      "The debt to Roty's Sower is obvious, but the Liberty Walking design is an original creation, not a slavish copy. This half dollar, one of the greatest coins of the United States--if not the world--is as modern as official sculpture can ever be. It has the combination of naturalism, classicism, and dignified inner balance, a generally suave figure style in the midst of traditional poses, costumes, and attributes, ... paralleling the highest level of commemorative art engendered by the First World War."