Moneta
Registered: August 2005
Location: Arizona USA
Posts: 2,365
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This is America's first commemorative coin, struck to celebrate the 400th Anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the 'New World.' This design was created by Charles Barber after a Spanish medal portrait of Columbus by Olin Levi Warner. These were issued for the World's Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World's Fair, in 1893. The reverse features a depiction of Columbus's flagship, the "Santa Maria" above two globes representing the Old and New Worlds.
This coin was produced for the World's Columbian Exposition that took place between the 1st of May to October 30, 1893, in Chicago, Illinois, which celebrated the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Columbus to America.
According to Tom DeLorey Coinage, May 2016, p. 9, the Columbian Exposition half-dollar "came about when the organization putting on the World’s Fair requested a grant from the U.S. Treasury of $5 million to help build the fairgrounds so it could open." The Treasury, however, gave "only $2.5 million due to the prevailing hard economic times." DeLorey goes on to say that someone "connected with the Fair Authority got the brilliant idea that if the Treasury would provide the $2.5 million in the form of five million commemorative half dollars," then the Fair would need only "to sell the coins for a dollar each" in order to obtain the extra $2.5 million dollars needed. Because of hard economic times, however, "only a few hundred thousand were sold at the premium, the rest were either released into circulation at face value or melted."
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