1920 50C Walking Liberty Half Dollar PCGS MS65 - color!

We are offering a gem specimen of the 1920 Walking Liberty half dollar. Although common in circulated grades, it becomes more challenging as the condition improves, and, in the grade of MS65 it becomes a true rarity. This example would be the perfect addition to a type set of U.S. half dollars--or a full date and mintmark collection of mint state Walking Liberty half dollars. If you wish to develop--or add to an existing type set, or work towards a full set of Walking Liberty half dollars--please reach out to AUCM. We are here to offer you professional advice and guidance.

The obverse of  this coin resembles the French coin designed by Oscar Roty, the "Sower." Numismatic scholar Roger Burdette writes that "Weinman has taken the ideal of a nineteenth century provincial figure [the "Sower"] and turned it into an American icon." In Burdette's analysis, the Liberty head--as well as the branches she carries--were adapted from Weinman's own statuary Union Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Baltimore, Maryland. The sculptor-engraver may have also been inspired by a 1913 bust he did of his tenant, Elsie Stevens, the wife of the lawyer and poet Wallace Stevens. Numismatic historian Walter Breen, in his book, Walter Breen's Complete Encyclopedia of U.S. and Colonial Coins, said of the famed design, "Ms. Liberty wears the American flag, anticipating a rebellious counterculture by half a century..."  

Renowned numismatic art critic and scholar Cornelius Vermeule writes of this beautiful coin, "The Liberty Walking half dollar ... really treat[s] the obverse and reverse as a surface sculptural ensemble. The Liberty Walking design particularly gives the true feeling for breadth and sculptural surfaces on the scale of a coin. These surfaces are formal, like a well-carved marble or precisely cast bronze relief for a war memorial .... the rising sun amid landscape anchors the motion of Liberty, her olive branch, and her starry cloak. On the reverse, the eagle standing on rocks with a gnarled tree at the left dominates but does not overwhelm the design. The working of the feathers is a miraculous coup de force ...."