When did half dollars disappear from circulation?

BSA camp gives them in change, as well as dollar coins, but they always run out
i got a 1968-d and a 1962-d last summer

 

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62-d? that was a stroke of luck.

 

Somebody came into the store a few months ago and spent 2 Franklins, a '52 and a '53. Later, I got another one in the same manner. I believe it was a '53.

 

That's amazing. I rarely see a 50-cent piece here in Reno, and hate it when I do, though I'd be pleased to see a Franklin, or better yet, a walking liberty.

 

I think it was pretty amazing. I couldn't believe it when he handed me the Franklins. The third half was spent with some post-'70 Kennedys.

 

I work in the cash office so I don't deal with the customers anymore. A few months ago a customer paid with a '64 and the cashier obviously didn't know it was worth anything so when I saw it at the end of the night I gladly kept it

 

At my job, I've found several remarkable coins:

2 steel pennies
V nickel
2 war nickels
buffalo nickel
30+ silver Roosevelt dimes
silver quarter
bicentennial silver quarter
the 3 Franklins previously mentioned
several 40% JFKs

 

When I was a youngster in the very early 60s I could (and did) walk into the Dollar Savings Bank or the First National City Bank and easily exchange $1 bills for both silver dollars and half dollars. Sometime around 63 they stopped giving me silver dollars, the were out of them they said. But I still got half dollars with no problem.

Two things killed that. One was the clad dollar. The big one was the Federal Govt. deciding (1965?) that they would no longer redeem or accept silver certificates. Suddenly the bank no longer wanted to hand over those silver halfs. Instead us kids were supposed to want the Kennedy's. Yeah sure, one or two while they were silver. When clad came out and I walked in with some paper bills I watched a teller pick through the halves and give me only the clads. She said that was bank policy. I didn't want them. I wasn't alone. No one got to vote on it.

Of course back then DC's money experts (crooks all) viewed inflation as good. To launch it we had to come off the silver standard. Pretty similar to the crime of 1873, but for different motivations (USSR, Marshall Plan, balance of trade in a post WWII environment, etc.). As an ad I was looking at recently pointed out (correctly), in the 60s you could buy 4 gallons of gas with two halfs, or a silver dollar (or a paper one). Today the silver dollar is still worth 4 gallons of gas, but the paper dollar only buys you 1/3 of one gallon (even less in some places).

 

i saw it in the drawer and asked to buy it. i also got 6 impaired proof dollar coins doing this .