Cincinnati Music Center half dollar
| United States | |
| Value | 50 cents (0.50 US dollars) |
|---|---|
| Mass | 12.5 g |
| Diameter | 30.61 mm (1.20 in) |
| Thickness | 2.15 mm (0.08 in) |
| Edge | Reeded |
| Composition |
|
| Silver | 0.36169 troy oz |
| Years of minting | 1936 |
| Mint marks | D, S. Found immediately below the date "1936" on the reverse. Philadelphia Mint specimens struck without mint mark. |
| Obverse | |
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|
| Design | Bust of Stephen Foster |
| Designer | Constance Ortmayer |
| Design date | 1936 |
| Reverse | |
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|
| Design | Allegorical figure with lyre |
| Designer | Constance Ortmayer |
| Design date | 1936 |
The Cincinnati Musical Center half dollar or Cincinnati Music Center half dollar is a commemorative 50-cent piece struck by the United States Bureau of the Mint in 1936. Produced with the stated purpose of commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Cincinnati, Ohio as a center of music, it was conceived by Thomas G. Melish, a coin enthusiast who controlled the group which was allowed to buy the entire issue from the government, and who resold the pieces at high prices.
Congress approved legislation for the coin on March 31, 1936, authorizing 15,000 pieces to be struck at the three mints then in operation. Melish had hired sculptor Constance Ortmayer to design the coin, but the Commission of Fine Arts refused to recommend the designs. Members objected to the depiction of Stephen Foster on the obverse, finding no connection between Foster, who died in 1864, and the supposed anniversary. Nevertheless, the designs were approved by the Bureau of the Mint, and 5,000 sets from the three mints were issued and sold to Melish's group, the only authorized purchaser.
Melish likely held back much of the issue for later resale, and with few pieces available, prices for the set spiked, rising to over five times the issue price. The value dropped somewhat when the boom in commemorative coins burst in late 1936, but quickly recovered and the coins are valuable today. Melish has been assailed by numismatic writers for greed.
Sparked by low-mintage issues which appreciated in value, the market for United States commemorative coins spiked in 1936. Until 1954, the entire mintage of such issues was sold by the government at face value to a group authorized by Congress, who then tried to sell the coins at a profit to the public. The new pieces then came on to the secondary market, and in early 1936 all earlier commemoratives sold at a premium to their issue prices. The apparent easy profits to be made by purchasing and holding commemoratives attracted many to the coin collecting hobby, where they sought to purchase the new issues. Among the pieces which had recently been struck and had appreciated in value was the 1935 Old Spanish Trail half dollar. This piece had been issued at the behest of L. W. Hoffecker, a Texas entrepreneur and coin dealer, who put aside a fifth of the 10,000 mintage for himself and sold them well into the 1940s, by which time he had served as president of the American Numismatic Association (ANA). Congress authorized an explosion of commemorative coins in 1936; no fewer than fifteen were issued for the first time. At the request of the groups authorized to purchase them, several coins minted in prior years were produced again, dated 1936, senior among them the Oregon Trail Memorial half dollar, first struck in 1926.
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