United States: 1920 silver Pilgrim Tercentenary commemorative half dollar

United States: 1920 silver Pilgrim Tercentenary commemorative half dollar

NGC MS65. Cert. #103302-002.

Numista-4398, Krause-Mishler-147.

Original mintage: 200,112 (of which 48,000 were later melted).

Provenance/source unrecorded; I forget. I likely acquired this coin on the Collectors Universe Buy/Sell/Trade forum in the late 2010s or early 2020s.

This commemorative half dollar was designed by the sculptor Cyrus Dallin. It was first struck in 1920 to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the founding of the Plymouth Colony by the Pilgrims. The obverse of the coin portrays the Pilgrim governor, William Bradford, holding a bible. The reverse depicts the ship Mayflower, upon which they came to North America in 1620.

Coins of this type were also struck in 1921 but sales were weak. Most of the 100,000 mintage for that year were melted, with only about 20,000 of the 1921 coins surviving.

I am a descendant of William Bradford through my maternal line, so this was a must-have type for me. This piece upgrades a PCGS MS64 example I previously owned. This coin is housed in a Generation 5.0 NGC holder, and thus was encapsulated circa 1992-1995. Collectors refer to this type of early NGC slab as a "No-Line Fatty".

Here's another bit of trivia about this coin type. Note the small "D" below William Bradford's elbow on the obverse (to the left of the larger D in DOLLAR). This is the initial of the designer, Cyrus Dallin. However, I have seen people (including the old Accugrade grading service!) mistake that small D for a mintmark. These coins were struck at Philadelphia like all commemoratives of the era, and not at Denver.



017500

 

I’m only relying on family oral history for my link to Bradford. I’ve never actually seen the whole family tree and all that.

But my blueblood maternal grandmother was in the Mayflower Society. That generation took such stuff very seriously.

There was a family story about a silver candlestick that had supposedly come down from Bradford or one of the other ancestors. I never saw it, and who knows whether all the stuff is true, and whether or not I’ve accurately remembered all of it.