Affordable Walking Liberty Half Dollars

Many collectors have commented that the Walking Liberty half-dollar design remains one of the most beautiful United States coins and might even argue that it could claim that title when stacked up against any world coin. The design work of Mr. Adolph A. Weinman has proven so popular that it was dusted off, re-used, and made famous again with the United States Silver Eagle program, where it has been going strong for almost 40 years. As if that honor was not enough, in 2016, it was one of three classic designs to be commemorated with a centennial piece in gold. That’s quite a list of accomplishments for a single design.

If there is a downside to collecting the original Walking Liberty half dollars, it’s that we often tend to see price tags for them that come from high-end pieces that have been sold at auction. That sort of press and popularity can make one ask, what about the possibilities that remain for those of us frugal collectors? Is there something still out there for the collector who does not wish to flatten his or her wallet like the proverbial pancake while building a collection? The short answer is yes. The longer answer will take us into the series in some detail.

The first year of issue for the Walking Liberty half, 1916, saw a pretty healthy mintage from three different facilities. But it was in 1917 that the production at the main mint in Philadelphia simply went through the roof, with a total run of 12,292,000. No matter how we stack ’em, that’s a lot of 50-cent pieces. But that number is also the starting point for figuring out just how we can find these half-dollars at a reasonable price. If we take a look through the price listings in Numismatic News or elsewhere, we’ll find that a 1917 from Philadelphia costs about $150 in a low Mint State grade, like MS-60. That’s not a disturbingly high number, but can we do better? Well, if we allow our tastes to drift to something like an Extra Fine, or EF-40, specimen, 1917 now costs only about $50. That’s a big saving for a very small difference in grade.

Right here at the beginning, as it were, we have arrived at something very important among the Walking Liberty half dollars. It seems there is an informal jumping-off point when it comes to prices. In the past few decades, the overall collector community has really fallen in love with classic coins in some Mint State grades, and that’s understandable. These sharp-looking pieces become the standard by which we tend to measure collections. Yet, in the process, we seem to have left all the circulated grades in the dust, even the better ones. And that is something of a shame since an EF-40, or an Almost Uncirculated AU-50, is usually still a very handsome coin. Plus, as we have just seen, when the cost for one plummets when compared to the Mint State version, it might very well be worth going for that less expensive piece.

Curiously, when it comes to the Walking Liberty half dollars, there is not all that much mentioned concerning what we might call the middle of the series. To be specific, we are talking about the issues from 1921 to 1933. First of all, there were plenty of years in there for which no half-dollars were struck at all. To be fair, 50 cents was a lot of money in those years, and so perhaps the general population didn’t use them nearly as often as they eventually would. Second, the economy did its famous bottoming out in 1929, when the Great Depression hit the U.S. and other countries, which meant there was probably again a smaller need for big silver pieces than might have otherwise been the case. And third, since the existing half dollars minted in that time must have been used for quite a while, it’s tough to find them as Mint State examples today.

By 1934, however, even though the Depression had not come to an end, the production of Walking Liberty half dollars increased significantly. That year, almost 7 million came out of the main facility in Philadelphia, and several million more were minted in Denver and San Francisco. In 1935, the numbers went higher in all three mints. And in 1936, yes, the totals climbed yet again. In short, this is where the Walking Liberty half dollars became common and where they remain highly affordable today.

To use a trio of examples and make some price comparisons, the 1934 that we just mentioned rings in at about $75 for a piece at the lower end of Mint State – again, a pretty fair price. But if we look at the EF-40 grade, the price drops all the way to $20. That’s a pretty amazing cost for a coin that still looks very good. If we make the same comparison with the 1936, for which over 12 million were produced, the Mint State example is only $40 – a great number in itself – but about $15 as an Extra Fine version. Adding one of the 9.1 million of the 1940s as our third point of comparison, it’s only $35 for the MS-60 and, once again, $15 for an EF-40 specimen. Clearly, we have found the time and the zone at which Walking Liberty halves become inexpensive 50-cent pieces.

Now, to add a bit of good news to our trio, we’ll point out that the 1940 is not even the most common in the series. Go to any of the standard references and take a peek at the 1941, 1942, or 1943 mintage figures. It’s fair to say they dwarf that already big number for 1940. This, in turn, means we’ll again find excellent price tags for such wonderfully common 50-cent pieces.

These examples bring us to an interesting point, at least when it comes to collecting. The conventional wisdom is that we should try to collect an entire series of any type of coin, certainly of classic United States coin series. That wisdom, however, always runs up against the problem of some very rare key date or mintmark. The 1916-D Mercury dime and the 1928 Peace dollar are two very well-known examples of this. But the big news is this: we don’t have to! We do not have to build a collection of every date and mintmark in a series to be able to claim success. A Walking Liberty half-dollar collection that starts with the 1934 and goes all the way up to the end in 1947 can be a fun and challenging undertaking. Putting such a collection together with EF-40 or AU-50 coins can still look quite handsome. Undertaking this while keeping a significant amount of money in our own wallets is another noteworthy feat in which we can take pride. Overall, it looks like the Walking Liberty half-dollars do have a lot to offer, even for those of us who want to venture into the series without spending a fortune