How did the 1853-O No Arrows half dollar issue come about, and why it is so rare? The Philadelphia Mint shipped new dies to the New Orleans Mint in late 1852, as was common practice, so that new coinage could begin in January. Shipping took time, as this era did not have efficient railroads and the safest route was by sea, which required several days passage from the East Coast to the Port of New Orleans. Research by Richard Kelly and Nancy Oliver, published in their March 26, 2011, Coin World article titled "Curious Origin for 1853-O Without Arrows and Rays Halves," recounts an article that appeared in The Daily Picayune, a newspaper published by the New Orleans offices of the Times-Picayune. Dated January 2, 1853, the article states:

The officers of the Mint in our city marked the opening of the New Year by very appropriately making a new issue of American coin. How extensive that was we are unable to say, but the twenty dollar gold piece and silver half dollar laid on our table for examination, as the product of the massive stamping machinery on the first day of the year, 1853, were admirable specimens of elegant design and finish.

This article would seem to account for the earliest appearance of this rare issue for, with the date of striking given as January 1, 1853, the half dollars produced on that day were almost certainly examples of the 1853-O No Arrows. Recall that during this period the California Gold Rush was well under way, with gold pouring out of the fields, streams and valleys into boats for passage to the Philadelphia Mint and Eastern banks, the entire affair disrupting gold prices relative to silver. This caused the price ratio of gold to silver to drop on the gold side, making silver more valuable than before. After 1850, it cost more than face value to strike silver coins. Accordingly, those that were made went into the hands of speculators and melters with yearly mintages dropping accordingly. By early 1853, it cost 53 cents in silver to coin a half dollar, and scarcely any were seen in circulation. In fact, most examples struck from 1850 through early 1853 were lost through melting, and survival rates are only a fraction of the mintages.

Congress, ever ready to pass laws after dutiful and thoughtful examination, finally addressed this crisis with the Mint Act of February 21, 1853, to be adopted on April 1 of that year. This Act reduced the amount of silver required for all coinage except the silver dollar, which for tradition's sake was left at the earlier standard. The half dollar was reduced in weight from 208 grains to 192 grains (13.36 grams to 12.44 grams), a reduction of about 7%. This reduction would bring the silver value of a half dollar slightly below face value, thereby stopping further melting of new coins issued after adoption of this Act. The Philadelphia Mint determined to identify this revised silver standard by placing arrows at the date of all silver coinage (other than the silver three-cent piece, which was already only 75% pure silver in content and could not be melted profitably). The newly authorized quarters and half dollars of 1853 were further distinguished by the addition of a glory of rays on the reverse around the eagle. The Arrows and Rays type would stand to "announce" to the general public that these coins were struck to the new reduced weight standard for silver coins, thus they should not be melted as no profit could be made from this venture. As silver coins were in strong demand across the nation, the new dies were prepared and shipped to the branch mints where coinage began in earnest on April 1 to the new standard. It would seem logical that older, heavier (and, hence, more valuable) silver coins struck before this revised standard would be gathered up and melted, including by the Treasury Department, to be coined again at the new lower weight standard. Today it seems hard to imagine that speculators would have so efficiently gathered up millions upon millions of silver coins and had them all melted for the modest spread, given the cost of transport, smelting costs and general risks of such an endeavor in a wildly fluctuating metals market. Regardless of who actually melted most of the old tenor silver coins, one fact is clear, not many of those earlier dated pieces exist today, especially those struck in 1850, 1851, 1852 and early 1853.

Given that the Arrows and Rays coinage was not authorized until February 21, the half dollars struck in the New Orleans Mint and referred to as "the product of the massive stamping machinery on the first day of the year, 1853," in the aforementioned article in The Daily Picayune could only have been No Arrows examples produced to the old weight standard. Unfortunately the mintage of this issue was not recorded, and we also do not know if additional examples were struck between January 1 and the introduction of the new weight standard and associated Arrows and Rays design. It was common practice to use old dies for coinage until they broke or were otherwise no longer serviceable. Indeed, continuing the use of serviceable dies on hand in one year for coinage of the next year was actually standard mint practice. Research by Liberty Seated half dollar experts Bill Bugert and Randy Wiley shows that the reverse of the 1853-O No Arrows is the same as that used to strike 1852-O coins from the WB-2 die marriage. It is most readily identifiable by a faint die line from the eagle's right leg to the underside of the right wing. Research by Walter Breen shows that 19 reverse dies were on hand in the New Orleans Mint in 1851, with production somewhat limited by the aforementioned rise in silver price, and by 1852 these dies were not being used as rapidly due to the resultant decrease in production. There were certainly several potential reverse dies available by the end of 1852, and with the new obverse dies arriving at that time, coinage could have begun on January 1 of the following year, as normal for the period, and it obviously did so.

The absence of a mintage figure for the 1853-O No Arrows in federal archives is also not without precedent in U.S. coinage history. Several issues are known to have been struck, the number of examples coined lost to history. The 1824 Capped Bust dime is a case in point, all examples of which were apparently struck and released in 1825 with coins of that date. The fact that New Orleans Mint personnel did not report the mintage of 1853-O No Arrows half dollars is likely because the Act of February 21, 1853 made those coins obsolete.

Estimates on the number of 1853-O No Arrows half dollars struck vary from several hundred to several thousand pieces, certainly no more than 3,000 to 4,000 coins. Regardless of how many examples were actually produced, virtually all were destroyed through melting, particularly after the Act of February 21, 1853 replaced these coins with their lighter-weight Arrows and Rays counterparts. Today, only four examples of this rare and enigmatic issue are positively confirmed to exist, the first of which was announced by John W. Haseltine circa 1881. The most recently discovered specimen made its numismatic auction debut in our Philadelphia ANA Rarities Night Auction of August 2012.

The popular book 100 Greatest U.S. Coins by Jeff Garrett and Ron Guth ranks the 1853-O No Arrows half dollar as #58. This historic rarity was previously considered uncollectible due to having three or fewer examples available to collectors. This fourth specimen now breaches that barrier and the issue now falls into that category of collectible, if only for the well heeled specialist.

The example to the left was sold by Stack's Bowers Galleries in the August 2017 Denver ANA Auction, where it realized $517,000.