page_title: Cincinnati Musical Center half dollar
section_title: Release, distribution, and collecting
hierarchical_section_title: Cincinnati Musical Center half dollar / Release, distribution, and collecting
caption_attribution_description: English: 1936 Cincinnati Musical Center half dollar set in holder of issue (263-6136)
context_page_description: The Cincinnati Musical Center half dollar or Cincinnati Music Center half dollar is a commemorative 50-cent piece struck by the United States Bureau of the Mint in 1936. Produced with the stated purpose of commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Cincinnati, Ohio, as a center of music, it was conceived by Thomas G. Melish, a coin enthusiast who controlled the group which was allowed to buy the entire issue from the government, and who resold the pieces at high prices.
  Congress approved legislation for the coin on March 31, 1936, authorizing 15,000 pieces to be struck at the three mints then in operation. Melish had hired sculptor Constance Ortmayer to design the coin, but the Commission of Fine Arts refused to recommend the designs. Members objected to the depiction of Stephen Foster on the obverse, finding no connection between Foster, who died in 1864, and the supposed anniversary. Nevertheless, the designs were approved by the Bureau of the Mint, and 5,000 sets from the three mints were issued and sold to Melish's group, the only authorized purchaser.
context_section_description: The mintage of 15,000 was struck in July 1936. At the Philadelphia and Denver mints, 5,005 pieces were produced, and 5,006 at San Francisco, with the excess from the even thousands held for inspection and testing at the 1937 meeting of the United States Assay Commission. The first 200 pieces from each mint were collected in sets of three, with a notarized letter from Melish testifying to what number coins they were. Several of these special sets were sent by Melish to government officials.
  Melish had been fielding inquiries from collectors since Roosevelt signed the legislation, but from mid-May, those who wrote received only postcards stating the new issue was oversubscribed. The summer of 1936 was the peak of the commemorative coin boom, and Melish announced the new pieces would be sold in sets of three by mint mark for $7.75 (a high price at that time). Order blanks were sent to those who had written early, and soon these blanks were selling for $10. Yet few collectors were successful in having their orders filled, with most having their payment returned as the coins had supposedly sold out. The sets quickly jumped in price to $40. At this high level, many coins proved available. Numismatist Q. David Bowers stated that these were most likely surreptitiously sold by Melish and other insiders. Melish also allowed the issuers of the York County, Maine Tercentenary half dollar to purchase, at the original issue price, several sets—members of the public could order at most one set at that price. In return, he sought to purchase that and other commemorative coins in quantities beyond the usual order limit. Nevertheless, when the Oregon Trail Memorial Association, issuer of the long-lived half dollar honoring the trail, tried to purchase a set, Melish replied that they were sold out.
  By December, the bottom had dropped out of the commemorative coin market, and dealers who had purchased quantities found themselves unable to dispose of them at a profit. By 1940 the coin sets were selling for $15 per set. They thereafter recovered, and by the early 1960s had reached $100 a set, and by 1975 $550 per set of three. At the height of the second commemorative coin boom in 1980, they sold for $2,250 a set. R.S. Yeoman's A Guide Book of United States Coins, published in 2015, lists the sets at between $875 and $2,700 depending on condition. Individual coins are cataloged at about a third of the set prices.
  The circumstances of the issuance were not clear at first: Mehl wrote that the coin was to honor the 50th anniversary of the "Cincinnati Musical Center" which was "founded in 1886" and that "either through good distribution or a great demand, the sets did not go around to all those who wanted them". Later numismatic writers have been harsh to Melish; Swiatek deemed the coin issued because of "false claims" on its behalf. Kevin Flynn, in his volume on commemoratives, stated that the Cincinnati piece "was made for pure profit and greed". Swiatek and Breen, in their 1988 book, suggest that Melish's group "had only one idea in mind: enriching themselves by publicizing and distributing a limited issue which could be priced into orbit by speculators".
  With the success of the issue, Melish tried to get Congress to authorize 1937-dated pieces; he was not successful. He had managed to get Congress to allow another commemorative under his control, the 1936 Cleveland Centennial half dollar. In 1942, when the ANA held its annual convention in Cincinnati, Melish hosted a hospitality suite. Dubbed the "Pirate's Den", it featured paintings he had commissioned, depicting coin dealers and other numismatic personalities in piratical clothes. According to Bowers, "Overlooked was the fact that the greatest pirate of all was surely Melish himself, who undoubtedly treated many of his guests with money taken from them a few years earlier in the sale of Cincinnati sets!"
caption: The Cincinnati set in holder of issue
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