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Message:: [QUOTE="leeg, post: 3449651, member: 17073"]Let's keep rolling on:   “The subject of this commemorative is a worthy one, but rather oddly it was sponsored by the motion picture industry rather than some patriotic organization. The explanation is that the ‘movies’ were sponsoring the ‘First Annual American Historical Revue and Motion Picture Industry Exposition’ during June 1923 with the Monroe Doctrine centennial being featured. The proceeds from the sale of the coins was to finance this project. However, by this time the motion picture industry was well advanced and had produced many fine pictures (several of them in 1923) which were also money makers, and since many of the coins were placed in circulation at face, I suspect that the underlying idea was not so much to obtain money as to obtain ‘good’ publicity. Even back then, there were people who thought motion pictures should be less entertaining and more educational and uplifting. The words LOS ANGELES on the coin refer to where the exposition was held.   Some years ago I called attention to the similarity between the reverse design on the Monroe Doctrine commemorative and that of a Pan-American Exposition medal. The medal bears the official seal of the Exposition by Ralph [sic] Beck. Mr. Beck complained to the Mint at the time of the coin’s release that Mr. Beach had used his symbolic design of North and South America but it was denied. Nevertheless, the similarity seems too striking to be mere coincidence. Perhaps the explanation is that the sculptor of the Monroe doctrine coin had seen the Pan-American seal some years before and carried it in his subconscious memory. Ideas are built on ideas. A trial piece exists in copper. The reverse on an oversized copper planchet also exists.”12 12 United States Commemorative Coinage, 2nd ed., Arlie R. Slabaugh, Wisc.: Whitman Publishing Co., 1975, p. 54-55.   “. . . In May and June 1923, 274,077 Monroe Doctrine half dollars were struck and subsequently sent to the Los Angeles Clearing House, which, as noted, obtained them for face value (plus reimbursement for the cost of making the dies). The coins were offered at $1 each and were distributed through banks, by mail, and other means, but not significantly through the so-called First Annual American Historical Revue and Motion Picture Industry Exposition, and event which history seems to have forgotten since.2   While it is certain that thousands of pieces were sold at a premium for $1 each, by and large the sales effort was a failure, and soon thereafter ‘nearly all went into circulation at face value,’1 a situation which certainly gained no friends among those who paid $1 each for specimens.   Fred Woodson, a California banker who was also an active coin collector during the 1930s, recalled that such pieces were common in pocket change and were frequently received at tellers’ windows. He amassed a small hoard of pieces in this manner. Graded by the author in the late 1970s the coins were found to be mostly in the AU-55 to MS-60 category. A Childhood Experience   In an interview with the author, veteran rare coin dealer John J. Ford, Jr. told of an experience he had in his youth:2   ‘I was born in Hollywood, California. My father had moved out there in the early 1920s and was quite flush with money as he was involved with the United Artists film people–Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.–as a money raiser or money man or something. Anyway, he walked into a bank in 1923 and was induced to buy 25 Monroe Doctrine Centennial half dollars. They were in little white envelopes and they cost a buck apiece. As I remember, they had some, but not much, printing on them. Later, when I was growing up in New York, he had a bureau in his bedroom. This had drawers on the top for nicknacks, ties, and handkerchiefs, with deeper drawers in the bottom for other things. In the top drawers he kept his jewelry, cufflinks, and tie pins and things, and that’s where he had these half dollars in their envelopes in a little pile.   ‘We moved to New York about 1926 because in 1925-1926 he had some business misfortune in California. So, our family had these commemoratives, but I didn’t know what they were. I was only two years old at the time. By 1932, when the Depression got really bad, we were living in Jackson Heights in Queens, which is about four or five miles from New York City. My father’s partner had committed suicide in 1929, and my father was wiped out; he was really scrounging. Money was very, very tight in 1932, when I was eight years old. I went to a parochial school, St. Joan of Arc, and on the way home from school there was a German bakery, and we used to buy our bread and rolls there. When my mother finally ran out of money, she discovered these Monroe Doctrine half dollars still in their envelopes. She went to the store to buy bread and other baked goods with the coins. In those days you could buy two buns for a nickel and a loaf of bread for six cents, and rolls were three for or four for a nickel. Money went a long way. The only problem was my mother had a lot of trouble with these Monroe Doctrine half dollars because they didn’t look like regular United States coins. The next time she sent me to talk the store owner into accepting them. I was quite persuasive, being eight years old and vey sincere, and with my Catholic schooling and all, so I managed to do all the bakery buying for most of 1932 with these half dollars. And they, of course, were gem Uncirculated. And they lasted, I guess, to then end of ’32 or early 1933.   ‘When I found out last year that in one of your auctions someone had paid $30,000 for a Mint State-67, whereas I had been spending them for face value in 1932–obviously top mint State pieces because they were in their original envelopes of issue, never having been taken out–I was rather flabbergasted. This just goes to show you that I should have kept the damn things! That was my first experience with commemoratives. . .”13 2. Writing in The Numismatist, May 1937, p. 393, John F. Jones stated that ‘a series of educational films were made’ in connection with the Exposition. 1. Reference: p. 29 of Coinage of Commemorative 50-Cent Pieces (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1936). 2. Interview conducted February 20, 1991. 13 Commemorative Coins of the United States; A Complete Encyclopedia, Q. David Bowers. Published by Bowers and Merena Galleries, Inc., Box 1224, Wolfeboro, NH 03894, 1991, pp. 168-171. <img src="https://oi11.photobucket.com/albums/a195/leeg1957/Book%20Project%20Images/Monroe%20Doctrine/Dennison%20Holder%20Stacks%20Bowers.png" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" />Old Dennison style mailing coin card used for this issue. Image courtesy of Stacks Bowers Galleries.[/QUOTE]

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