Muncie Coin & Stamp Club

Presented at the January 2018 Club meeting during show-n-tell by Herb Schmidt

A good video explanation on 1975 No S Dimes

On March 3, 1901 President William McKinley signed legislation calling for a Centennial Exhibition in St Louis to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.  Unfortunately he would never see the celebration he called for because on Sept 1st at the Pan-American Exhibition, McKinley fell to an assassin’s bullet, dying thirteen days later.

The Columbian Exposition was run by a group called the Board of Gentleman Mangers. This situation was totally unacceptable to Susan B Anthony and the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association. So with their agitation a Board of Lady Managers was created.

It was 1951, and the legislation for the Booker T Washington half dollars built in ending deadline was reached. Congress was probably thankful that the last commemorative half dollar was now history.

The Columbian Exposition in Chicago was going to be a spectacular event. Marking the four hundredth anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s discovery of America, and the first World’s Fair to be held in the United States. The exposition was huge, over 600 acres and over 200 buildings.

In order to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal and the linking of the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean, an international exposition was to be held in 1915 in California. The Exposition was authorized in 1913, but the legislation authorizing the commemorative coins to be struck and sold at the exposition was later in coming, much later.

The second coin called for in the January 16th 1915 act authorizing coins to commemorate the Exposition and the opening of the Panama Canal was the gold dollar.

On January 21, 1915 four artists were awarded the right to design one of the coins for the Pan-Pacific International Exposition.