Franklin Half Dollars (1948–1963)

Sinnock Based the Reverse on a Sketch He Did Not Attribute, and the Cold War Made His Initials Controversial

Mint Director Nellie Tayloe Ross had long wanted a Franklin coin, and Chief Engraver John R. Sinnock's 1933 medal portrait of the Founding Father may have given her the idea; she asked him to prepare designs for a new half dollar. Sinnock modeled the obverse portrait on a bust by 18th-century French sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon. The reverse showed the Liberty Bell, which Sinnock based on a sketch by artist John Frederick Lewis that had been used for the 1926 Sesquicentennial commemorative half dollar; Sinnock did not attribute this source at the time, and the connection was only established decades later by numismatic historian Don Taxay. Sinnock died in May 1947 before completing the reverse design, which was finished by his successor Gilroy Roberts. The Commission of Fine Arts objected to both the small reverse eagle (required by statute on every coin of greater value than the dime) and to the visible crack in the Liberty Bell. Treasury Secretary John W. Snyder approved the design anyway, apparently unwilling to alter what had been Sinnock's final work.¹

When the coins were released in April 1948, the public objected to Sinnock's initials JRS, which appeared at the bust truncation. Many letter-writers insisted the initials referenced Joseph Stalin. The Mint responded with what Walter Breen later described as outraged official denials. The accusation had no merit; Stalin had no middle name beginning with R. The Roosevelt dime, also designed by Sinnock and bearing his initials JS, had drawn the same accusation two years earlier. The initials remained unchanged through 1963.²

Full Bell Lines: What They Are and Why They Control the Series' Premium Market

The Liberty Bell on the reverse carries two sets of horizontal lines near its base, and the completeness of those lines on a given coin is the defining collecting distinction in the Franklin half dollar series. Both PCGS and NGC designate qualifying business strikes as Full Bell Lines (FBL). PCGS requires complete separation of the lower set of lines; NGC additionally requires the upper set to be complete. A Franklin half dollar with the FBL designation in Gem (Mint State 65 or finer) is a substantively different coin from one without it, and the price differential can be enormous: a common date in Mint State 65 trades modestly, while the same date with FBL in the same grade can trade at multiples. Full lines need a strong strike, and many Franklin halves left the press without one, while contact marks across the bell disqualify others.³

The 1953-S FBL Is the Series' Defining Rarity

Among the 35 date-mint combinations in the series, no business strike approaches the difficulty of the 1953-S with Full Bell Lines. The San Francisco Mint struck half dollars that year with dies that produced conspicuously weak details on nearly every coin, and 1953-S Jefferson nickels show the same weakness. Of the 4,148,000 1953-S half dollars struck, PCGS and NGC had together recorded 68 Full Bell Lines grades by 2022, a count that Heritage's cataloguers believe is inflated by resubmissions. Most of the coins that do exist surface in the upper Mint State grade range. A 1953-S FBL in Mint State 65 commands five figures; the record auction result is $69,000 for an example graded PCGS Mint State 66 Full Bell Lines, realized at Bowers and Merena in 2001.⁴

Other significant FBL conditional rarities in the series include the 1949-S, a strike-challenged issue that is rare in Mint State 67 with full lines; the 1955 Philadelphia issue, which has the lowest mintage of any regular business strike in the series at 2,498,181 and brings thousands of dollars only at Mint State 67 FBL; and the 1952-S and 1951-S, both of which reflect the San Francisco Mint's chronic difficulty with this design throughout the early 1950s. Each is hard to find at the top of its grade range with full lines, though none is as rare as the 1953-S FBL.⁵

Proofs Were Struck From 1950 Through 1963

No Proof Franklin half dollars were produced in 1948 or 1949. Beginning in 1950, Proofs were struck annually at Philadelphia and sold as part of the annual Proof sets. The 1950 Proof set, the first issued since 1942, commands a premium as such. Proof Franklin half dollars are generally available in proportion to their original mintages; the earlier issues, particularly 1950 through 1955, were packaged in stapled cellophane envelopes that left hairlines and staple damage on many examples, and deeply original, undamaged early Proofs are considerably scarcer than the raw mintage figures suggest. Cameo and Deep Cameo (Ultra Cameo in NGC terminology) examples are rare in the early 1950s, when the mirror fields were degraded by die use quickly; the later dates are found with deep contrast far more often. The 1956 Type 1 Proof, distinguished from the common Type 2 by having four separated feathers to the left of the eagle's perch rather than three, is about ten times scarcer than the Type 2 and brings strong premiums in high grade with deep cameo contrast.⁶

Building the Set

A type set requires one coin. Any common Philadelphia date from the mid-1950s through 1963 in Mint State 64 or 65 is an inexpensive, attractive representative of the design. A complete date-and-mintmark set of all 35 business strike combinations is a manageable project in circulated grades and accessible in lower Mint State; the challenge concentrates in the early San Francisco issues, which require patience in problem-free, original examples even in grades well short of Gem. A complete FBL set is a long-term specialist project, with the 1953-S FBL representing the single unavoidable obstacle that may take years to resolve. Proofs run parallel to the business strikes and add 14 dates from 1950 through 1963. The controlling specialist reference is Tomaska, Rick, A Guide Book of Franklin and Kennedy Half Dollars (Atlanta: Whitman Publishing, 2010; later editions available), which provides the most thorough date-by-date FBL and Proof population analysis available for this series.⁷