RARE 1854 Half Dollar 50C Seated Liberty Arrows SILVER COIN Philadelphia AU MS

Description

Half dollars minted before 1853 were the Christian Gobrecht designed Seated Liberty type. They had been in production for over a decade, and the public was quite used to the design that featured Liberty seated on a rock and an eagle with outstretched wings. Eckert felt a need to provide some visible symbols by which the new coins could be distinguished.
After all, if silver prices fell and the old standard was resumed, the lighter weight coins might be withdrawn. If the lighter standard became permanent, older coins without the distinctive mark might be easily culled out by banks, Treasury offices and other coin-handling centers.
The first lighter weight coins released in 1853 featured arrowheads flanking the date on the obverse and a blaze of raised rays surrounding the eagle on the reverse. This combination was highly visible, but the rays complicated the die makers' work and slowed die production to an unacceptable degree. Dies with the rays also failed much more quickly that the older design, requiring endless preparation of more replacements. For 1854, the rays were deleted from the quarter and half dollar, creating the Arrows type.
This design was struck in 1854 at Philadelphia (no mintmark) and New Orleans (O).
In 1855, San Francisco (S) augmented the production of the other two mints. Mintmarks can be found on the reverse, beneath the eagle. A small, but unrecorded number of proofs of both years exist.
Perhaps as many as 20 pieces survive of the 1854 coinage, while proofs of 1855 are rarer still, with about a dozen pieces known today. The late Walter Breen recorded three "Branch Mint Proofs" of the 1855-S half, which he believed were struck to celebrate the beginning of silver coinage in San Francisco. One of these, given by San Francisco Mint Superintendent Robert Birdsall to Mint Director James Ross Snowden, later became part of the National Collection at the Smithsonian. The entire question of branch mint proofs is still an area of spirited debate, even among veteran collectors and students of America's 19th century proof coinage.