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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;ziggy29, post: 26403, member: 1113&quot;]It&#039;s really interesting.&nbsp; The half used to be a workhorse of the economy; a century ago they were to commerce roughly what the $20 bill is to us today.&nbsp; Even up to the days of the Franklin half, it was commonly circulated.</p><p><br /></p><p>Based on what I&#039;ve read on the issue, perhaps the initial &quot;popularity&quot; of the Kennedy half *and* the decision to keep minting 40% silver halves after 1964 may have contributed to the decline and fall of the half dollar in commerce.</p><p><br /></p><p>It&#039;s known that many folks hoarded JFK halves...essentially loving them &quot;too much&quot; and not spending them.&nbsp; The sudden enormous spike in half dollar production in 1964 -- FAR more coins than commerce needed -- attests to that.&nbsp; The public wanted these coins...to hoard and keep, not to spend.</p><p><br /></p><p>Also, once lower denominations were fully debased starting in 1965/66 (and starting with 1965-dated coins, much to my chagrin as all my siblings got silver &quot;birth year sets&quot; and I got clad), Gresham&#039;s Law (stating that &quot;bad money&quot; drives out &quot;good money&quot; in commerce and has been true for centuries) kicked in.&nbsp; People saved the coins with silver content and spent the debased coins with very little intrinsic value.&nbsp; The government, recognizing this, decided to counter this by fully debasing the half in 1971.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>But by this time, the half dollar had been largely absent from commerce long enough that even the debasement of the half and the saturation of JFK pieces in commercial channels wasn&#039;t enough to get people used to spending them.&nbsp; It was long enough that merchants no longer really had a place for halves in their registers.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Perhaps had they stuck with making Franklins and fully debased the half along with the dime and quarter, the half would be circulating more today.&nbsp; Speculation, of course, but still...[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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