History
Many consider the 1848 2½ dollar gold piece counter stamped "CAL" to be the first U.S. commemorative coin, as it commemorated the finding of gold in California.
Most standard lists begin with the 1892 half dollar commemorating the 400th anniversary of Columbus' voyage to America. The following year, the Columbian Exposition quarter dollar featuring Queen Isabella of Spain was issued.
Most students of U.S. commemorative coinage acknowledge the gap between 1954 and 1982 by classifying those minted from 1892 to 1954 as Early Commemoratives, and those minted since 1982 as Modern Commemoratives.
In 1925, a commemorative 50-cent coin was released that showed Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. Money raised from the sale of the coins was combined with money raised by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial Association in order to fund the carving of a Confederate monument at Stone Mountain.
The U.S. Mint was criticized for commemorative issues of dubious recognition, and seemingly endless mint runs (the Oregon Trail Memorial 50-cent piece was minted 8 years during a 14-year span). The period of Early Commemoratives ended with the 1954 issues of the Washington–Carver 50-cent piece.
Read more about this topic: United States Commemorative Coin
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.”
—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)
“... the history of the race, from infancy through its stages of barbarism, heathenism, civilization, and Christianity, is a process of suffering, as the lower principles of humanity are gradually subjected to the higher.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)
“The myth of independence from the mother is abandoned in mid- life as women learn new routes around the mother—both the mother without and the mother within. A mid-life daughter may reengage with a mother or put new controls on care and set limits to love. But whatever she does, her child’s history is never finished.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)