The Walking Liberty, Cast in Gold for Its 100th Birthday

In 2016 the U.S. Mint had three birthdays to celebrate at once. The dime, the quarter, and the half dollar America used in 1916 were all turning one hundred — and all three had been designed in the same burst of artistic ambition. The Mint's idea was simple and a little audacious: restrike those three classic designs, but in pure gold.

The Walking Liberty half dollar was the grandest of the three. Its 1916 design by Adolph A. Weinman is, for many collectors, the most beautiful coin the United States has ever circulated. So the Mint shrank it slightly and struck it in half a troy ounce of 24-karat gold — a coin that still says "Half Dollar" on it, but carries hundreds of dollars of metal.

It went on sale on November 17, 2016, at $865 apiece, with a three-per-household limit. The Mint authorized up to 70,000. Demand fell short of that ceiling, and the coin's sales window closed for good. The final count: 65,512 — the lowest mintage of the three centennial gold coins, and the reason this one is the quiet prize of the set.

The design is pure Weinman, untouched. The obverse — the heads side — shows Liberty in full stride, wrapped in the folds of an American flag, walking toward a rising sun. In her left arm she carries branches of laurel and oak: laurel for civil glory, oak for military. Her right hand reaches out, open. It is motion and optimism in metal.

Turn it over and an eagle springs from a rocky crag, wings half-raised, a sapling of mountain pine growing beside it. The reverse — the tails side — is as alive as the front, which is rare; most coins put all their art on one face.

Adolph A. Weinman was born in Germany in 1870 and came to America at fourteen. He trained under Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the sculptor who had already revolutionized American coinage, and under Daniel Chester French, who carved the seated Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial. In 1916 a design competition put Weinman's work on both the new dime and the new half dollar — an extraordinary double for one artist. His Walking Liberty proved so enduring that the Mint revived it again in 1986 for the American Silver Eagle, where it still appears today.

The 2016 gold version was struck at the West Point Mint, which is why it carries a tiny W — a mint mark, the small letter that tells you which facility made a coin. Graders at PCGS and NGC classify its finish as a "Special Strike" (abbreviated SP) — a presentation finish that is neither an ordinary business strike nor a mirrored proof, but something deliberately in between.

There is only one issue to collect here — one date, one mint, one finish — so this is not a coin you chase across decades of varieties. The interesting question is grade and place in the set.

Because it was struck once and never repeated, the 65,512 figure is the whole supply, forever. That makes it scarcer than the gold Standing Liberty quarter and gold Mercury dime that completed the centennial series, even though all three were capped at the same 70,000. Collectors who want the full 1916-design tribute in gold need all three, and the half dollar is the one most likely to set the difficulty.

As with all modern gold issues, condition is everything. The top grades — a flawless SP70 from PCGS or NGC, meaning a coin with no imperfections visible at magnification — command a real premium over the same coin a grade lower. Original Mint packaging and the certificate of authenticity matter to many buyers, because they confirm the coin is the genuine West Point issue and not a damaged or re-handled example.

One honest note for newcomers: this coin's worth is anchored by its gold content, then lifted by its scarcity and beauty. It is a collectible first and a bullion coin second — the opposite of how it spends, since you could in theory still hand it over for fifty cents.