LOT Old Heritage Auctions  /  2008 February Long Beach Signature Coin #460  / 

1044

1915-S $50 Panama-Pacific 50 Dollar Octagonal

Currency:USD Category:Coins & Paper Money / US Coins Start Price:65,000.00 USD Estimated At:1.00 - 1,000,000.00 USD
1915-S $50 Panama-Pacific 50 Dollar Octagonal
<B>1915-S $50 Panama-Pacific 50 Dollar Octagonal MS63 NGC.</B></I> While artists are afforded a certain latitude in creating designs for the Treasury, rarely do they have any influence over other factors, such as materials or dimensions. Yet Robert Aitken, who received the commission for the fifty dollar round and octagonal Panama-Pacific commemoratives, had a distinct, if not necessarily quantifiable, impact on the diameter of the pieces he designed.<BR> After meeting with a Mint official, Acting Director Dr. Frederick Dewey, and other artists, Aitken paid a visit to "the Numismatic Society," as he described it in a letter to Dewey that is quoted by Roger Burdette in his <I>Renaissance of American Coinage 1909-1915</B></I>. There, he discovered that the fifty dollar round pieces issued by private coiners and the half union pattern crafted by the U.S. Mint had varying diameters. When Aitken wrote to Dewey, the artist requested that the Mint official determine an appropriate diameter for the round fifty dollar piece, surmising that the dimensions of the round fifty dollar coin would necessarily affect the octagonal version if both formats used the same design. In his reply, Dewey advised Aitken to take the opposite approach, basing the diameter of the octagonal design on the original Augustus Humbert "slugs" and select the diameter best suited to use the octagonal design's motifs in a round format. While the Treasury would make the final determination, Aitken's influence is clear.<BR> This octagonal-format example, strongly lustrous for the issue, is yellow-gold with a touch of haze over each side. Few overt marks are visible on either side, though the surfaces show a few wispy abrasions. Well struck and fundamentally appealing, an important representative from a distinctive issue in the classic commemorative series. A regular, curved crack on the encapsulation appears on the obverse photo.<BR><I>Ex: Stack's, February 4-6, 1965, part of lot 717.<BR>From The John Stimson, Sr. Collection, Part Two.</B></I><BR><BR><b>Shipping:</b> Coins & Currency (<a target="_blank" href="http://www.heritageauctions.com/common/shipping.php">view shipping information</a>)
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