USA: silver commemorative half dollar, Pilgrim Tercentenary, 1920

USA: silver commemorative half dollar, Pilgrim Tercentenary, 1920





Obverse: William Bradford left, wearing tall hat and carrying a book, presumably a bible.
Reverse: Mayflower ship sailing left over wavy seas.

PCGS MS64, cert. #09022114. Ex-Michael Kittle Rare Coins, 3/15/2014.

I had wanted a pretty Pilgrim half for a while, since I'm a descendant of William Bradford, who's featured on the obverse. Or so I was always told. My mother still sends me copies of the Mayflower Quarterly, though I haven't read many of them. Family lore said my grandmother had a silver candlestick which had belonged to William Bradford, but I never saw it when her estate was divided up, so that story may or may not have been apocryphal. Who knows. My grandmother did come from a decidedly blueblooded clan. (Not that you'd guess that if you met me, two generations removed.) Anyway, even if the Bradford candlestick was just a misty family legend, I've finally had a nice piece of silver with a William Bradford connection, right?

Miscellaneous links:
Larger image
PCGS cert verification page
PCGS priceguide trends
Numismedia priceguide trends
NGC Coin Explorer listing

Wikipedia links:
William Bradford (Plymouth Colony governor)
Mayflower (ship)
Cyrus Edwin Dallin (designer)

When posted here, this coin had just been given to a friend out of my "Eclectic Box of 20" collection.

 

I'm shipping this coin away to Greece in a couple of days.

Just gave it away, can you believe that?

An old friend of mine loves this coin and always has. Being a Greek architect, with their economy in the crapper, he has fallen on hard times. But in his better days he sold me some beautiful stuff and outright gave ME $100-200+ coins on at least two occasions.

It took some soul-searching to detach from this piece, but after a month of dithering around, I knew what the right thing to do was.

What comes around goes around. I finally reached that Zen state where I realized this coin belongs to him now.

First I had to tease him a bit and tell him I was shipping it away, because I had been holding it for him while he tried to scrape up the money. Initially I had wanted to sell it at a profit, then I came down to offering to him at cost, then, after more soul-searching, I knew what I had to do.

Knocked his sox off when I told him that the person I was shipping it to was him.

His reaction alone was worth the money I had invested in this coin.

Some things, like a good friendship, are worth more than mere silver or gold, and I told him that.

It isn't like he hadn't already done a whole lot more than that for me.

 

Yeah, a Pilgrim half, even a nice one, is replaceable.

I was dang fond of this one, though, even though I could've bought one a point or two higher in grade. This one just had the right toning and look.

It took me a while to come around and forget the greed factor and turn loose (yep, I've got greed in my heart just like anybody else, much as I try not to let it take over.)

But I finally cut the ropes, so in the next couple of days, the Mayflower will sail across the Atlantic again, this time in the opposite direction.