My Favorite Coin: Stone Mountain Half Dollar

My favorite coin for this column is a Stone Mountain half dollar. After looking at many coin collections/accumulations formed in the Deep South, I have observed that when the “collection” contains an early U.S. commemorative coin, it’s likely to be a circulated Stone Mountain half dollar. As Anthony Swiatek, author of Encyclopedia of Commemorative Coins of the United States, put it, the Stone Mountain half dollar “... is abundant in EF-AU condition.” The reason why there are so many Stone Mountain commemoratives around is that the coin had a huge mintage for a commemorative, with Swiatek reporting a net distribution of 1,310,000. The only other early commemoratives with mintages of more than a million are the 1893 Columbian and 1952 Carver/ Washington half dollars.

Have you been to Stone Mountain, Ga., to view the memorial carvings? In April 1967, my wife and I were attending a psychological convention in Atlanta. I had just given my first paper at a convention, and to celebrate this, we decided to drive to Stone Mountain.

You can imagine our shock when we heard a national broadcast on our car’s radio announcing a major disaster in Baton Rouge, La. The city had received a record rainfall of 12 inches! As graduate students at LSU, we were renting a house just off campus, and we had already discovered that heavy rain would cause the house to flood. We could only imagine how bad it would be after a record rainfall.

It was with heavy hearts that we drove back to Baton Rouge the next day. All I will say about what we discovered when we got home is that we will be forever grateful for the American Red Cross and for my wife’s relatives who had driven up from New Orleans to clean the house and had taken our clothing to be cleaned. We moved out shortly thereafter and rented a second floor apartment in another part of the city.

My Stone Mountain half dollar was graded MS-65 by Professional Coin Grading Service (PCGS), as are all the other coins I’ll talk about in this column. It has a Greysheet (Coin Dealer Newsletter, CDN) value of $190, and a PCGS Price Guide value of $260. I bought the coin in a Heritage auction for $190.25 in 2007. Presumably, if I decided to sell the coin, a dealer would pay me about what I paid for it 17 years ago. Based on this coin, my advice is that you shouldn’t buy classic commemoratives expecting them to increase greatly in value. As Anthony Swiatek wrote about the Stone Mountain commemorative, “... the coin is not difficult to locate in grades up to MS-66. Collectors should attempt to procure the flashier, eye- appealing coin, but only for the joy of collecting. Only the loftier grades are likely to increase in value.” By loftier grades, he means those higher than MS-66. And that’s why I bought my coin in MS-65: for the joy of collecting.

The 1925 Stone Mountain coin commemorated the beginning of the carving of a pair of Confederate generals on horseback on Stone Mountain, Ga. The closest general, the one with the hat, is Robert E. Lee, whereas his companion is General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson. Lee is considered a great strategic military thinker, Jackson his able tactician and adviser.

Unfortunately for Lee, but fortunately for the Union, his perhaps best general was shot in the left arm at night by his own troops. He survived the amputation of his arm, but eventually succumbed to pneumonia as a result of the wound. When informed of Jackson’s imminent death, Lee said, “He has lost his left arm, but I my right arm.”

The reverse of the coin depicts an eagle standing on a mountain crag. The inscription in the left field reads, “Memorial to the Valor of the Soldier of the South.” The coin was designed by Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor who carved the famous images on Mount Rushmore. Although Borglum planned the Stone Mountain carvings, he did not do the actual work. According to Swiatek, “A dispute arose between the sculptor and the Stone Mountain Confederate Monumental Association, and Borglum was dismissed. Augustus Lukeman was hired to complete the beautiful project.” If you’re interested in the idea of a collection within a collection, a number of the early commemoratives are related to the Civil War. For example, there’s the 1922 Grant Memorial half dollar issued to commemorate the centennial of Ulysses S. Grant’s birth. There are two varieties, one with a star on the obverse and one

without the star. With a mintage of only 4,256 examples, the coin with a star is quite pricey. The version without a star had a mintage of 67,405 and is much less expensive. According to the “Red Book,” “The star has no particular significance.” My example is an MS-65 without a star that I bought for $399 for in 2020. Its current CDN value is $420. Another early commemorative with a Civil War theme is the 1936 issue commemorating the Battle of Gettysburg. The obverse depicts both a Confederate and a Union soldier. With just 26,928 coins minted, this issue is pricier than the others I’ve discussed. I purchased an MS-65 example in 2020 for $615. The current CDN value in this grade is $660. In 1937, the Mint produced another Civil War-themed coin to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam. This battle had the dubious distinction of being the bloodiest battle of the war, with more than 23,000 soldiers either killed, wounded or missing. The obverse features the two opposing generals, Robert E. Lee and George B. McClellan. Only 18,028 examples were distributed, so it’s expensive in any grade. My MS-66 coin cost $575 in 2020, and its current CDN value is $650. Finally, the 1918 Illinois half dollar commemorating the centennial of the admission of Illinois into the Union can be part of a Civil Warthemed collection, as it features the forlorn visage of Abraham Lincoln on the obverse. This is one of the more common early commemoratives, with a net mintage of 100,000 pieces. I bought an MS-65 example for $249 in 2020, and its current CDN value is $310.

As I realized while writing this column, with the exception of the Stone Mountain commemorative, all of the coins I talked about have increased in value since I bought them. I still believe that you should not buy the classic commemoratives for their investment potential, however. Most of them have interesting and sometimes beautiful designs, and many of them have celebrated important events in America’s history.

And if all they provide is Swiatek’s “joy of ownership,” what’s wrong with that?