1935 Hudson

One of my all-time favorite classic silver commemorative! Gotta love Chester Beach funky design.

Where else in USA coinage are you going to find an image of Neptune riding backwards on a whale, while a mermaid blows on a conch shell?

Also enjoy the funky quarter moon on the reverse ... Beach's tounge in cheek reference to Henry Hudson flagship (depicted) Half Moon.

I've rarely seen this coin well struck ... as evidenced by your example. This is a treasured ... and expensive ... coin in all grades.

I'm guessing by your photographs mid-MS ... call is MS63/MS64.

Lovely coin ... congratulations muddler!

David

PCGS ms 64 destine to be cracked and put in my album.

Orders were accepted beginning the first week of May by the Executive Committee of the Sesquicentennial, through John R. Evans at the First National Bank & Trust Company, Hudson. The cost was $1 each plus 18 cents for registration and Three Cents postage for each two coins. It was intended that sales would commence on June 28, 1935, but only a few days later, on July 2, it was stated that the entire issue had been sold out and that no pieces were available. Relatively few collectors had placed orders by the time that the 'sold out' notice was posted.

Rumor has it:

Subsequently John R. Evans informed buyers that 'reservations for these coins have been accepted since the first part of May. The coins were received from the Mint on June 28, and July 2 the supply was depleted. The demand was so great that our entire 10,000 has been exhausted and there are no more available except through a few dealers who purchased them.' Two dealers were the main buyers: Guttag Brothers (42 Stone Street, New York City) and Hubert W. Carcaba (182 Magnolia Avenue, St. Augustine, Florida). Julius Guttag of Guttag Brothers was believed to have obtained 7,500 coins for 95¢ each. Guttag's involvement became an inside joke with his coin dealer competitors, who slyly referred to Hudson coins as 'Guttag half dollars.'1

1. Per correspondence from John R. Evans to Walter P. Nichols, undated, circa early July 1935. Also L.W. Hoffecker files. Guttag was to become involved on the distribution of the 1938-dated New Rochelle half dollars.

You're welcome.



So, you have an empty bag? How is it marked?

The bag is printed :
$1000
City of Hudson N.Y.
Half Dollars
U.S. MINT
PHILADELPHIA
____________

1935

After some difficulty I managed to upload a mediocre image, thankfully my daughter has a digital camera but I did a crummy job photographing it sorry about the lens shadow on the left .... the bag reads $1000 but the tag reads 1000 coins ....freddo30

That bag is very cool.

There was an uproar in 1935 also. An example:

". . . As might be expected, collectors whose orders were returned by the issuing bank were incensed, and numerous complaints were registered to the American Numismatic Association, the editor of The Numismatist, the American Numismatic Society, and just about anyone else who would listen. A deluge of bad publicity overtook the city of Hudson itself.

Many people suspected foul play, especially since Hudson half dollars were aplenty on the market and in dealers' stock at $5 to $7 a short time after the original distribution ended. Even at those inflated prices, coins were snapped up by eager buyers, and those speculators who thought to hold back coins soon saw prices reach an even higher level.

. . . Collectors finished last in the Hudson half dollar folly, a harbinger of other things to come within the next half year, particularly the phony distribution toward the end of the 1935 with 'small 1934' Boone half dollars by C. Franck Dunn in Lexington, Kentucky."1

1. Commemorative Coins of the United States; A Complete Encyclopedia, Q. David Bowers. Published by Bowers and Merena Galleries, Inc., Box 1224, Wolfeboro, NH 03894, 1991, p. 294-297.

Sweet.