1952 50C Franklin Half Dollar NGC PR67 Cameo

Great price! CDN = $1,100. Compare this with Coast-to-Coast @ $1,650. 

Here is a beautiful piece to add to your collection, one that will give you years of pleasure. It features the famous profile of Benjamin Franklin, a world-renowned Founding Father of our nation.

NGC has graded 150 as PF67 Cameo with 37 finer. Collector’s Universe prices this issue at $2,700.00. Buy this piece from AU Capital Management and you will save a whopping $1,675 off of the Collector’s Universe price!

Nellie Tyloe Ross, circa 1922, the Mint Director who was determined to place Benjamin Franklin upon a circulating United States coin. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Debut of the New Franklin Half Dollar

April 29, 1948, saw the new Franklin half dollar launched at a black-tie affair held at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Mint Director Nellie Tyloe Ross and other mint officials hosted over 200 invited guests at a formal reception and dinner. At each place setting was found a card with the guest’s name upon it. Attached to the card, in a plain cellophane envelope, was a lustrous, new Franklin half dollar; beneath the coin was Ross’s signature. National distribution began the very next day.

The New York Times reported that on April 30, Franklin halves were sold at face value after a noontime ceremony in front of the Federal Sub-Treasury building at the corner of Nassau and Wall Streets in New York. The time and locale were selected to coincide with the one hundred and fifty-ninth anniversary of the swearing in of George Washington as the first President. The coins were distributed by employees of the Franklin Savings Bank who were dressed in the garb of Continental Army soldiers.

Jean-Antoine Houdon’s statue of Benjamin Franklin. He crafted it when Franklin was in Paris. It was the model for the Franklin half dollar. Photo: Wikimedia Commons. 

Mint Director Ross gave an interview to the Associated Press that was published in the Portsmouth Times of Portsmouth, Ohio. She said that Franklin was against having anyone’s image upon a coin, although she said, “But probably it was royal heads that he objected to.” Ross said that she had been “a Poor Richard fan” her entire life. She had a passion for studying Franklin’s writings—as well as reading the books historians had written about him. Ross said that it seemed like a good idea to her to have him on a piece of currency that the average American could use on a daily basis.

She said, “Had he known in his day that 150 years hence his image would be placed on a coin of this, his native land, to whose service his life was consecrated, we may assume, I believe, that he would not have been seriously displeased.”