From the Desk of Q. David Bowers: American Coin Design

By Q. David Bowers, Chairman Emeritus



A beautiful (in my opinion) American coin design, the Walking Liberty (or Liberty Walking) half dollar minted from 1916 to 1947.

In terms of motifs United States postage stamps are much more varied than are United States coins. We even have Elvis and Mickey Mouse on stamps. We seem to be stuck with portraits of presidents and other real people. It wasn’t always so. The U.S. Mint keeps turning out designs that letters to the Coin World editor say, figuratively speaking, are not much more artistic than car-wash or arcade machine tokens. At the same time I keep reading that more and more artists are at work at or for the Mint!

I for one would welcome a return to a nice depiction of Miss Liberty.



A modern commemorative for the USO. What do you think of the artistry?



Some of our modern commemoratives are, well, just plain awful. Of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and you may find the illustrated USA coin to be of rare and elegant beauty.



Athena looks quite nice to me.



If we can’t have Elvis or Mickey Mouse on a coin, how about revisiting the history of ancient Greece and trot out a new version of Athena? She looks quite nice on the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition $50. Her wise owl is cute too!



Do we need another hippocampus on a coin?



Or perhaps a hippocampus, that wondrous animal of mythology that can be found on the obverse of the 1915-S Pan-Pac commemorative quarter eagle.



Curious George

I’m full of design ideas. Another would be to take one of our past presidents and portray him as a Roman warrior, for variety. Take George Washington for example. We see him every day on the quarter. Here is another version of George from a coin dated 1792.

See you next week!

Dave Bowers

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