1861-O Seated Liberty Half Dollar (1839-1891)
FS-901
Key Features
FS-901: 'Speared Olive' - bud pierced by claw [Cross-ref: W-15] Source: https://www.greysheet.com/prices/sp/liberty-seated-half-dollars/8955 A sprawling series that survived the Gold Rush and Civil War. Features Christian Gobrecht's classic Seated Liberty design.
Intriguing History
This 1861-O Seated Liberty half dollar was struck at the New Orleans Mint during one of the strangest chapters in U.S. minting history: the facility began the year under U.S. authority, was seized by the state of Louisiana in January 1861, and then passed to the Confederacy before its bullion ran out and coining ceased that spring. The die cracks and doubling recorded in this variety are the physical fingerprints of that chaotic changeover, struck by whichever authority controlled the mint at the moment the dies were in use.