1876 Seated Liberty half-dollar

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Like other 1876-dated American minor coinage, large numbers of these halves were struck for the purpose of retiring fractional currency introduced during the Civil War. (With a mintage of 8.4M, these are the most common Seated half, and many of them were coined with silver recovered from older issues.)

So much for my sentimental theorizing—as a kid I had thought we had coined so many because of the centennial in 1876.

But these 1876 half-dollars might have found employment at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, nevertheless. The Statue of Liberty was then under construction, and her right arm—the arm with the torch—had been set up at the Exposition. For the price of a 50-cent piece like this one, a visitor to the fair could climb a ladder up to the balcony level of the exhibit and get a preview of “Liberty Enlightening the World,” a full decade before her dedication in October, 1886.

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