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1915-S $50 Panama-Pacific 50 Dollar Round MS66 NGC. As

Currency:USD Category:Coins & Paper Money / US Coins Start Price:1.00 USD Estimated At:1.00 - 1,000,000.00 USD
1915-S $50 Panama-Pacific 50 Dollar Round MS66 NGC. As
<B>1915-S<$50> Panama-Pacific 50 Dollar Round MS66 NGC.</B></I> Assorted potentates, politicos, dignitaries, and luminaries gathered at the San Francisco Mint on June 15, 1915, to watch Mint Superintendent T.W.H. Shanahan strike the first octagonal fifty-dollar gold coins commemorating the Panama Pacific International Exposition. The exposition observed the opening of the Panama Canal in August 1914 and belatedly celebrated the 400-year anniversary of the 1513 sighting of the Pacific Ocean by the Spanish conquistador Vasco Nunez de Balboa. The exposition, an enormous world's fair that took more than three years to plan and build, was the vehicle chosen to pay tribute to these history-shaping events.<BR> The construction and opening of the Panama Canal was so momentous in the annals of American history (as well as in Panamanian history, Latin-American relations, geographic exploration, disease treatment and control, commercial transport, travel and tourism, and hydraulic engineering, among many others) that Congress appropriated the then-gargantuan sum of 50 million dollars for an exposition to appropriately commemorate it. The completed canal, one of the largest and most difficult engineering projects ever undertaken, had an enormous effect on shipping. It removed the need for ships crossing from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean (or vice versa) to navigate the long, treacherous route via Cape Horn at the southernmost tip of South America. The canal reduced by more than 7,800 miles, or about 20 days, the distance for a voyage from New York to San Francisco. After intensive lobbying by several cities, President William Howard Taft in 1911 named San Francisco as the exposition site. This recognition gave the city the opportunity to show off to the world its extensive rebuilding since the horrific, massive earthquake and fire of 1906.<BR> Congress specified numerous coins i