1862-S

San Francisco struck 1,352,000 half dollars in 1862, a figure that towers over Philadelphia's 253,550 from the same year and tells a sharp story about wartime production geography. The eastern economy had already lost confidence in paper money by the summer of 1862, and silver coinage struck at Philadelphia largely vanished into hoards within weeks of leaving the cashier's window. California operated under different rules. The Pacific Coast had refused legal-tender notes from the outset of the war, transacted in coin by ordinary custom, and treated gold and silver as the working money of daily commerce. The San Francisco Mint therefore kept striking half dollars at a pace the Philadelphia facility could not justify, and those coins actually entered circulation through the saloons, freight offices, and waterfront merchants of a city that was funding much of the Union war effort from its mining wealth.

Survival in circulated grades is correspondingly broad. Most surviving 1862-S halves show honest, even wear from years of commercial handling, with the strike quality typical of the branch mint, softness on the head of Liberty and on the eagle's claws, with the shield lines and date often sharper than the central devices. Authentication rests on the published standards of 12.44 grams and 30.6 millimeters with a reeded edge, and on a bold S mintmark seated below the eagle on the reverse; the absence of any motto above the eagle is correct for this date, which falls in the No Motto era that ran through 1866. The Wiley-Bugert reference identifies multiple documented die marriages for the year, all warranting side-by-side comparison with the published photo plates before any premium is paid for a variety attribution.

For date-set collectors, the 1862-S is among the more accessible Civil War-era half dollars precisely because San Francisco kept striking and those coins kept circulating. For broader context on the design's evolution and the wartime hoarding that bracketed this issue, see the Seated Liberty Half Dollar series history.