• When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Nice article by RWB on the 1929 half eagle in the 8/30/10 Coin World

Started by DaveG,

4 posts in this topic

DaveG

DaveG

Posted
Posted

For those of you who are interested in the 1929 half eagle, NGC (and PCGS) board member Roger Burdette (RWB) has a very nice article in the August 30, 2010 edition of Coin World.

 

The article uses original mint records to attempt to track the distribution of the 662,000 coins struck.

 

Roger reports that the coins were minted between January and March.

 

(Personally, I am very interested to discover exactly when small mintages of coins were struck. I understand that not everyone shares my excitement - but that's why I'm a Coin Geek and others aren't.)

 

Following being struck, the coins were stored in Vault F, Cage 6, where most of them languished until 200,000 were shipped in October 1931. Thereafter, records show no more coins being shipped until February and March 1933.

 

Roger estimates that about 300 1929 half eagles are extant now and that, most likely, they are the survivors of 1,000 coins shipped in March 1929 to the US Treasurer to be available for sale to the public over the counter at the Treasury building in Washington.

 

He also remarks that auction and sale records show that most transactions have been for uncirculated or high-end AU coins, which confirms that most of these coins either didn't reach circulation or circulated very, very little (which is no surprise in the depths of the Great Depression, when $5 was a very large amount of money).

 

I applaud Roger for doing this kind of research that, in my view, really brings vibrant animation to an otherwise lifeless (although uncirculated) hunk of yellow metal.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
RWB

RWB

Posted
Posted

Thanks! I've rarely been accused of bringing "vibrant animation" to things! :)

 

The 1929 research is part of my attempts to identify which gold coins were melted during the 1930s - so far as that is possible. Another objective is to estimate how many gold coins from 1920-1933 still exist by date & mint. The sources are all original documents, and not anecdotes or auction catalog cut-and-paste excerpts.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Go to topic listing