1890 Seated Liberty Half Dollar

Philadelphia struck 12,590 half dollars in 1890, the final year of the sustained low-mintage era. The Wounded Knee Massacre in December marked the tragic end of the Indian Wars, as federal troops killed hundreds of Lakota men, women, and children on a South Dakota reservation. The following year would bring a dramatic increase in half dollar production.

The twelve-year run from 1879 through 1890 produced fewer than 107,000 half dollars total, a figure that a single month's production in the mid-1870s would have exceeded easily. The 1890 closes this remarkable period of collector-only production. Sherman's Silver Purchase Act, passed in July 1890, replaced the Bland-Allison Act with a mandate for even larger Treasury silver purchases, though the half dollar saw no immediate benefit. The 1890 is a semi-key date and the terminal entry in the low-production run, collected as the closing chapter before the 1891 production increase and the end of the Seated Liberty design.