Collecting Walking Liberty Halves
LIKE MOST JUVENILE COLLECTORS in 1953, when I started collecting coins I concentrated on Lincoln cents. The reason was primarily financial: I could save one “old” Lincoln cent for a penny, whereas coins of other denominations were multiples of this amount. In other words, half dollars, unless they were particularly interesting, were out of the question.
If you think about when this was, you’ll realize that most of the half dollars encountered in change were Walking Liberties. Franklin half dollars were only in their sixth year of production, whereas the Walking Liberty series had ended only a few years earlier (1947), having been produced for more than 30 years.
Adolph Alexander Weinman executed the design for the Walking Liberty half dollar and the Mercury dime. Both coins were part of the renaissance in U.S. coin designs that began with the Buffalo nickel in 1913. Born in Durmersheim, Germany in 1870, Weinman came to the U.S. at the age of 10 to live with a relative and learn the grocery trade.
The young Weinman quickly began to show an aptitude for art in various forms, including drawing, modeling, and carving. Weinman served a 5-year
