I have been eyeing this Half dollar for a while now. It has been in his case for a good couple of years. His price has come down on it, and I bargained him a bit better. Anyways please vote in the poll and further explain your grade or opinion below.
It looks like a MS 64 to 65 coin— right on the border of gem grade MS. I would call it PL, given the striations, and cameo like contrast. It has classic die polish striations on both the obverse and reverse. My grade would then be MS 65 PL.
I voted MS-66, assuming that the vertical lines are die polishing marks and not cleaning or post strike marks.
I like this even more now that I had to look it up. I had never seen this piece before. I am in at 65.
I went 64 but believe it could be higher. The pictures make it look like there are enough marks in the fields to keep it from being higher. I have one of these as well.
One of these Robert E. Lee medals was featured in the 1958 television program "Yancy Derringer - The Loot from Richmond". It was used to portray a "Confederate Half Dollar". "Yancy Derringer - The Loot from Richmond" - Robert E. Lee medal obverse More information on the television program: https://www.brianrxm.com/comdir/cnsmovtv_yancyderringer_loot.htm
I will have to look for that episode of “Yancy Derringer.” I have the series on DVD. I don’t remember that one, but I’m getting old. It’s pure fiction, of course. All four of the Confederate half dollars were in the hands of known owners at the time. Also, the only Confederate general who appeared on a piece of Confederate money was Stone Wall Jackson who was on the 1864 $500 dollar bill. Many Confederate politicians appeared on their money, however, which tells you something. It’s interesting to note that there are claims that no one knows what happened to the Confederate treasury in gold. After listening to a lecture on John Breckenridge’s flight from the Union Army at the end of the war, he might have used a substantial part of it to buy boats and aid during his journey with a couple of other people. He ultimately managed to get to Cuba from the south coast of Florida on a ricked little boat.
MS 67....quite clean and no major distraction; I believe many of these look PL or DPL but NGC does not always give the designation. Yours looks at least PL but I'm guessing NGC did not give it anything.
So-called half dollars ... here is a thread and a nice summary from member "commems": "Charles E. Smith was a Boston coin dealer. I don't believe he was a big dealer or a "market maker" as I've not seen ads of his in the primary numismatic publication of the time - the ANA's The Numismatist. (This is just conjecture on my part, however.) At the time Smith's medals were issued, the US Congress was putting the brakes on US commemorative half dollar coins. Smith may have believed he could fill a void in the marketplace by creating commemorative medals that were roughly the same size; Smith's medals were slightly larger at 32 mm in diameter to avoid running afoul of the US Government. You mentioned that the 1947 issues can "sometimes be found in Mehgrig album pages." At the time of issue, Smith contracted with Wayte Raymond, the originator of such boards, to create a page for the eight-piece set and to use "So-Called Half Dollars" as the title for it. Mehgrig may have reprinted the board after the original Wayte Raymond supply was sold out; they did so with many of the other Wayte Raymond pages. In the 1960s, Capital Plastics also produced three-piece plastic holders for these medals. The Battle of Lexington, the Daniel Boone, the Lindbergh, the Antarctic Expedition and the Pony Express pieces were all originally issued prior to 1947; Whitehead and Hoag re-struck these medals for Smith from the dies they had used in prior years." https://www.coincommunity.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=328924
A genuine coin is worth tens of thousands of dollars. A Scott restrike coin is worth a few thousand as they were made in the 1880’s using the original reverse die. A replica coin is modern and struck as a souvenir. Only worth a few dollars. A Silver art round is worth its weight in silver. A Replica with the word COPY is barely worth a few dollars.
Thanks for the info @ddddd very cool to see the coin was featured in the movie @willieboyd2 I will have to look that one up. I will wait till this evening for the reveal. Probably right before the finals game 2. Go Nuggets.
It's a technical gem going away. But IDK, sometimes they market grade a funny for strong die polish lines.
Here is the Scott "restrike" of the Confederate half dollar. This as close as I will get to owning one.
Sorry Folks I got a little distracted last evening. The grade is MS65 PL. It's hard to measure the mirrors on this one because it isn't raw. But I can read text from about 6-7 inches.