2014 is only 4 years off and I wonder if the coin is going to stay in production that long and if there will be some kind of special issue in 2014 to commemorate the 50th anniversary? Any other coins have anniversaries coming up that you are curious about?
I kind of wonder if they'll only sell Kennedy half dollars with gold coins as to both make them rare and sell more gold. Hey, I'll bite.
would be cool if they just dumped the design for something more classic like the walking liberty half.
We already have/have had the Walking Liberty's return with the ASEs now for the past 23 years. I don't see this design return happening for the halves. When we reach Kennedy halves at 50 they should make a decision to kill the business strike halves and only produce halves, in a new design, for collectors in mint and proof sets. I love large sized coins and I love the Walking Liberty but I don't think they should regress to earlier designs nor to a design currently used in other denominations, the ASE $1.
I would like a smaller half dollar to be produced for circulation, I think for the 50th ann. they should have a special design for that year only!!!
ok how bout old capped bust obverse and a walker half reverse? course I wish the ASE had the walker reverse...it's one of the best reverses in this newbie's opinion
how about just killing the half off all together the way putting kennedy on it killed the half from circulation.
The Kennedy design is old and the coin, at its current size, serves no purpose. They should use the half for special events/commemoratives; the Mint made a mistake using the quarter for this purpose. If I ran Treasury, I'd go willy-nilly with the half. First, I'd introduce a new quarter design---no Washington, use Washington on the dollar coin (and drop the prez dollar crap). For that matter, no presidents---we've had too many president coins. So spruce up the quarter. Drop Kennedy. Find a good half dollar obverse---something really pretty, not computerized corporate styling; for the reverse, introduce 2-3 special event backs per year. The larger half-dollar size lends itself to public art.
In my opinion, all of the modern designs with dead presidents on them should be redesigned...yuck!!! That goes for paper money too. We're talking waaaaaaay too many years that this has been going on.
+1. id like to see designs go in a new direction but id also like to see a few more pieces commemorating the first 100ish (or so) years of us coins. so often was there designs that lasted 10 years or less most people now would be completely oblivious to them.
Up until that point the half dollar was a regular circulating coin that was in common everyday use. But EVERYONE wanted the new coin with the martyred President on it. Not just in the US but all around the world. As soon as the coins would hit the banks they would be snapped up and hoarded. Circulation of the new coins just didn't happen. it also didn't help that they were silver and the metal in the coins was right at or even a little above the face value of the coins. So the Franklins continued to circulate but the Kennedys did not. Then with the 1965 -69 Greshams law conspired to push the Franklins out of circulations while at the same time their own silver content made them vulnerable to Greshams law with the clad coins forcing them out of ciculation (along with the still unsated demand for the hoarding of the Kennedy coin.) By the time the Kennedy switched to clad in 1971 the half dollar had effectively been out of circulation for seven years. Habits had changed and there was no longer a demand for the large coin. (Plus now when one did appear it was considered so unusual that it was still hoarded for that reason alone. All of these things conspired to kill the circulation of the half dollar. If Kennedy had not been assasinated and the Franklin had continued and been made of the 40% silver and finally clad composition the public may hav conatinued their habit of circulating half dollar and they might have remained an everyday use coin.
I believe that for the Roosevelt Dime's 50th anniversary, they minted the 1996"W" for the unc. sets. Hope they do something like that, but also make the W for circulation too.