1865 50C Seated Liberty NGC/PR66

The 1865 half dollar started out with a mintage of 511,400 business strikes. Relatively few pieces are extant. Some of these are ‘hoard’ coins, as alluded to by Randy Wiley and Bill Bugert in their Complete Guide to Liberty Seated Half Dollars: ‘A hoard of 15 pieces was released about 8 months prior to the 1980 ANA sale. Another hoard of approximately 20 Uncirculated coins of this date was supposedly released by a dealer just prior to the 1987 ANA.’