Starting Another Collection Of Half Dollars

Walking Liberty (WL) set, IMO, would be a very nice looking set to put together. I had a nearly complete set put together over 25 years ago .. and is the one set I wish I had never sold.

One suggestion is to do a search on this site and read the old post on WL's. The old posts will give a pretty good idea about what you might expect when starting this set.

As for a low ball set, this is where a collector tries to put together the lowest grade set possible.

Another suggestion I would have, is to decide what grade you would like to collect, for example VF/XF. Then check prices of all the coins in those grades and add up what your getting into. For this set, the coins from 1940 through 1947 can be purchased at melt to say $25 each .. depending what grade you decide and where you purchase. The coins from 1916 through 1921 are you higher priced coins in VF/XF many of these coins could get into multiple hundreds each, and can be hard to find in problem free coins.

For me, I like to figure out what the highest priced coins will cost me, in the grades I choose and commit to spending that amount. Even if it is a plan that will take you years to complete. For example if you decide you will someday purchase a VF/XF 1921 D and will someday spend $500 for that coin make the commitment, even start putting funds away for that purchase .. with a plan .. and the funds and commitment it will make it easier to make that purchase when the time comes.




If you were going to be happy with AG/G coins with the top coins in this set, then it may be possible, I would think the 21's. 16's and 17's would still have some premium.

I am definitely going to be working with non TPG coins. For some reason, I have not developed an affinity for graded coins for whatever reason.

I am going to try and put together this set from the best coins that I can afford at the time of purchase. So that being said then the question that I have on my mind is if I purchase the war years in say au and then go after the key dates in lower grades, outside of being cheaper would the set be looking weird?

I guess that I'll have to see what kind of money I will have to throw into this set. So it's off to Numismedia to see what prices they show for these coins.

some of them are still 1k coins in xf, so nice job Monks

Nice looking coins. And not to easy to complete but rather easy to find almost all of them. You really should try to find coin shows. I'm now working on set #6 with only a few left to complete that one. Oddly enough at coin shows I've seen enough of those Walking Liberty halves that if someone wanted to they could make a complet set in one day if they had the money. Many of the really common ones are in the $20 or less range and in great shape too. Many in much less amounts if you want low grades.

thanks nod, always loved the half dollar ( my favorite coin ) so I went a little crazy 15 yrs ago and completed the WL and franklin set. the barbers of course are in a league all by themselves but EF grades I'm currently working on now

Completing the whole set is an expensive and daunting proposition IMO. Had I to start anew I'd probably take out the first page of my album and not even look for those tuff key dates. Just VF's in some of those run many hundreds.

I have MS62-MS65 in my first "line" ( 16-17 ) and from 1929D up. But anywhere from F12(21D) to AU55 on most of those "tuffies"/keys in between. Always looking to upgrade but I have many thousands already in them.

A 1934 - 1947 run is the easiest. I could find some solid AU55s even for 1934 and the 40's in the local dealer's 2 for $32 Walker bin. An AU run of those dates wouldn't cost that terribly much except that dreaded 38D and a handful of others. But going for the whole run you're going to have to realize you'll be accepting some fugly ones in there or pay big bucks for them.

Heck of a nice looker in BU though! ;)