I'm sorry it took me so long to get back to this. It had been a long time since I read about the Bust halves being found during the Depression, so I went back and took a little tour of my bookshelf.
The large numbers of Bust halves available to collectors was noted in the 1957
Redbook:
“From 1806 until 1840 large quantities of half-dollars were coined to take the place of the silver dollars which were not made during that period. For that reason half-dollars of most dates during that span of years are fairly common.”
A fuller explanation has been an annual feature in the
Redbook—this one is also from the 1957 edition, but elsewhere in the book:
“Lacking gold coins and silver dollars, the half-dollar became the desirable coin for large transactions, bank reserves, and foreign payments. Until 1830 [modified to 1834 in the 2015 edition], in fact, half-dollars circulated very little as they were mainly transferred from bank to bank. This will account for the relatively good supply of half-dollars of this period which are still available to collectors in better than average condition. A senate committee of 1830 reported the United States silver coins were considered as so much bullion and were accordingly ‘lost to the community as coins.’”
(This “bullion” problem was finally corrected in 1853 when U.S. subsidiary coinage had its silver content reduced and became a de facto token coinage like that of its British cousins.)
But Breen in his 1988
Encyclopedia was the one that had apparently stayed with me:
“Tens or hundreds of thousands of specimens 1809-1836 went directly to banks, which retained them as part of their cash reserves, long after new laws mandated smaller sizes and lower weights. These coins came to public attention about 1933-34, when Pres. Roosevelt’s bank holiday resulted in exhaustive searches of many cashiers’ vaults. Others showed up during the same period owing to bank failures; still others from hoarders’ estates. Before then, the biggest single source was probably the Economite hoard (buried by the New Harmony Society, Economy, Pa., and discovered in 1878). This contained 111,356 bust half dollars, many close to mint state but scrubbed—including 100 1815’s. For this reason many varieties of this design come mostly in VF to AU, “sliders” (slightly rubbed coins being masqueraded as ‘UNCIRCULATED’) being common.”
Nice Bust half-dollars are so relatively common that they have been widely collected by die varieties.
Finally, though, when the new supplies of these coins surfaced in the 1930s, the public was consumed with the commemorative half-dollar craze and the filling of penny boards from circulation, etc., etc. Kind of a “get-rich-quick” thing, which of course was perfectly understandable given the economic climate of the time. But there just wasn’t much money to be made in Bust halves, so they were largely ignored at the time.
Here, from a New York company’s 1934 buy/sell catalog, is the warning on page 14: “Be sure and read my list of
‘Coins We Do Not Buy.’ It may save you time and expense.”
And sure enough, there it had been, back on page 12, a list of 17 items or classes of items the company wanted no part of. Item 8 of the
‘Coins We Do Not Buy.’: U.S. Half Dollars 1818 to 1839 with busts of Liberty, except 1836 (milled edge).
They did, however, list buy prices for the Bust half-dollars of 1807-1814, but only in Uncirculated grade. Their buy prices? Between $0.75 and $0.55, depending on the date. Yikes!
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I'm not a collector of gold coins and don't know much about them, but if there's a story about the 1917 London sovereign, I'd love to hear it.
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