page_title: California Diamond Jubilee half dollar
section_title: Preparation
hierarchical_section_title: California Diamond Jubilee half dollar / Preparation
caption_attribution_description: English: 1915-S $50 Panama-Pacific 50 Dollar Octagonal (1216-4458)
context_page_description: The California Diamond Jubilee half dollar was a United States commemorative silver fifty-cent piece struck at the San Francisco Mint in 1925. It was issued to celebrate the 75th anniversary of California statehood.
  The San Francisco Citizens' Committee wished to issue a commemorative coin as a fundraiser for a celebration of the statehood diamond jubilee. A California congressman attached authorization for it to another coinage bill, which was approved by Congress in early 1925. Designs by sculptor Jo Mora met a hostile reception at the Commission of Fine Arts, but the Citizens' Committee would not change them, and they were approved. The coin has been widely praised for its beauty in the years since.
  The coins were struck in August 1925 in San Francisco, and were sold the following month. They did not sell as well as hoped: only some 150,000 of the authorized mintage of 300,000 were ever struck, and of that, nearly half went unsold and were melted. The coin is catalogued at between $200 and $1,300, though exceptional specimens have sold for more.
context_section_description: On May 4, 1925, Rossi sent a letter to Mint Director Robert J. Grant. Rossi noted that there had been some delay in the preparation of the design for the new half dollar, and that California Senator Samuel M. Shortridge had urged Rossi's committee to move forward without delay. Rossi enclosed sketches by California sculptor Joseph (Jo) Mora, with the promise that a finished design, and a model, would follow. Citizens' Committee members had selected Mora unanimously, feeling he was the one artist who could capture the spirit of what was being commemorated.
  On receipt, the sketches and letter were forwarded to the Commission of Fine Arts, charged since 1921 with making recommendations on coinage design, and then to its sculptor member, James Earle Fraser, designer of the Buffalo nickel. Fraser wrote to Rossi on May 18, deprecating the designs, "the bear is entirely too short, and the whole thing inexperienced and amateurish." He recommended that Chester Beach (credited with the design of the 1923 Monroe Doctrine coin) or Robert I. Aitken (who had created the 1915 Panama-Pacific $50 pieces) be hired, as both were from California and might create "something which would be far more interesting and with a bigger sense of what California really is".
  Despite Fraser's recommendations, the Citizens' Committee stayed with Mora, who quickly turned out the finished sketches. Anthony Swiatek and Walter Breen, in their volume on U.S. commemorative coins, suggested that the Citizens' Committee did not hire Beach or Aitken due to lack of time and an unwillingness to pay their large fees. The finished models were sent to the Philadelphia Mint on June 17, and were forwarded to the Commission. By this time, Fraser was no longer a member of the Commission and they were sent to Lorado Taft, along with a note that the Citizens' Committee had not hired Aitken due to the expense and that the new designs were little better than the old. However, both Taft and another member, Louis Ayres, recommended acceptance. Ayres did suggest "that 'In God We Trust' be placed in some position where it does not seem as if the '49ers were frying it in oil". Numismatic historian Don Taxay averred that this advice was not followed due to the lack of an alternative position in which to place the motto.
  With the designs accepted, the Mint created working dies based on the plaster model in July 1925. These were sent from Philadelphia to the San Francisco Mint, where 150,000 coins were struck in August, plus 200 reserved for inspection and testing at the 1926 meeting of the United States Assay Commission.
caption: Robert I. Aitken created the $50 Panama-Pacific coins, but was not hired for the California Diamond Jubilee half dollar due to expense.
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