Collectors Take Half Measures

and definitely more sense than keeping the $1 note!

My vote would be..

Make the Half dollar the first coin to go back to the Liberty design.

If the design was very beautiful Liberty design, feel everyone would
want one ... and maybe a good chance at circulating.

With a dead president on the coin ... half the people in the country
would start out not wanting it.

I think it would be cool if they put a living president on there. Perhaps they can put President Obama on there. If not, I will have to settle for getting the Obama Chia Pet.

I would very much miss the JFK half as I like having a larger silver proof issue coin, aside from the ASE, to collect. Although halves are currently NIFC, they used to be made as an actual medium for commerce. So even though I like ASE's, for some reason since the ASE's never were made for circulation, the halves seem more like a "coin" to me.


@joeysanders
Thankfully they cannot put a living president on a coin as it could be seen as too much of a political statement. The law tends to keep politics out of coinage.

Also remember the memory of JFK is treasured by people who are old enough to remember the assassination. So if there is a presidential replacement, in order not to make a lot of Americans very, very upset, it would be a good move to replace JFK's effigy with someone so opposite in political ideals.

I agree, but the problem with putting actual people on the coins to begin with is that people view removing them as a gesture that the person is no longer important to us.



We're now well on the way to being a 3rd world kleptocracy, so I wouldn't be surprised if someone proposes in the near future that images of living people be allowed on coins.

@Bret


Sad, but factual.

I remember being called in from recess early that November day in elementary school, waiting in line to return to class and having the principal come out, obviously shaken, and telling us to go home and be with our families. Even as much as I also look forward each year to the Kennedy half dollars (and am still kicking myself for not buying the 3/4 oz gold version), I would not object to his image being replaced with a design symbolic of an American ideal like Liberty or Freedom. I do think that for the 50C piece to return to circulation that it would have to get smaller, bigger than the golden dollar, just big enough to easily distinguish it from the quarter, and maybe thinner as well to keep costs down. I really don't see a need to eliminate the Kennedy design though, since it is a numismatic only coin now, and the numismatic coin program is wildly profitable for the mint, bringing in many times as much profit as the bullion program does. A different design on a re-imagined circulation coin could coexist with a traditional numismatic coin.

Its nice piece showing on above there