1995-P Kennedy Half Dollar

Shortly following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, Congress expedited the approval of redesigning the half dollar to honor the nation’s fallen president. The first Kennedy half dollar was released in early 1964, replacing the Franklin half dollar that debuted only 16 years earlier in 1948.

The Kennedy half dollar, with the obverse designed by Gilroy Roberts and the reverse by Frank Gasparro, was an immediate hit; millions of mourning Americans jumping on the opportunity to own a “souvenir” of Kennedy for only 50 cents. This led many into thinking the Kennedy half dollar is inherently more valuable or worthy of saving than other half dollars and soon helped lead to an effective removal of the half dollar from circulation. By the early 1980s, the denomination had become virtually non-existent in day-to-day transactions, even though the half dollar remained on the lineup of business-strike circulating coinage until 2002.