1916-P Walking Liberty Half Dollar
Key dateThe first year of Adolph A. Weinman's design, introduced in the 1916 recoinage that also replaced the dime and quarter. The mintmark sits on the obverse below the motto for this year only and part of the next, which makes 1916 and early 1917 visually distinct from the rest of the series.
Mintage
- Business strikes
- 608,000
- Mint
- Philadelphia (no mintmark)
- Mintage rank
- 6 of 65
Rank 1 is the lowest business-strike mintage in the series. Mintage is what the Mint produced, not what survives. These circulated as money through two world wars and the Depression, and large quantities were later melted for their silver, none of it recorded by date.
Reading the figure
Among the 20 Philadelphia issues in the series it is the 2nd smallest. Of the 2,130,400 struck across all mints in 1916, this issue accounts for 29%. Denver struck 1.7 times as many that year. The 1916 split ran Denver 1,014,400, Philadelphia 608,000 and San Francisco 508,000. The series median is 4,094,000, so fewer than half as many of these were struck as a typical date.
Every sentence above is computed from the mintage table on this page, not asserted separately.
About this figure
Proofs were struck in 1916 and 1917 but never formally reported, and they are vanishingly rare: Breen recorded seeing four 1916 proofs, and only three 1917 proofs are confirmed. The regularly reported proof mintages for this series begin in 1936.
Scarcity tier
Key date
Assigned from reported mintage alone: under 750,000 is a key date, under 2,500,000 is a semi-key.
This is a reproducible label derived from the mintage column, not a market valuation and not a Coin Curator price opinion. The same thresholds apply to every series on this site. Several dates are far harder or far easier to obtain than their mintage implies; where that is true, it is stated above.
Weak strike is not wear. Walking Liberty half dollars are chronically weakly struck, especially the branch-mint issues of 1917-1929. Read the full note on the series page.
What to check before buying
Specific to the 1916-P:
- 1Confirm where the mintmark sits before judging the coin: 1916 and the early 1917 issues carry it on the obverse below IN GOD WE TRUST, everything later carries it on the reverse at lower left. A listing that describes the wrong position is describing a different issue.
And for any certified coin
Verify the certification number on the grading service’s own lookup rather than from a photograph of the label, match the listing images to the certification record including grade and any variety attribution, look for cleaning, compare the mintmark against published photographs of the genuine issue, and read the return policy before buying. The grading guide covers each of these in full.
Coin Curator does not grade, authenticate, or appraise coins, and publishes no price or population data. These are verification steps, not a valuation.
Verify a certification number
Look a 1916-Pcertification number up on the service’s own site. A photograph of a label proves nothing.
Each service publishes its own guarantee with conditions and exclusions. Compare PCGS, NGC and ANACS.
Find a 1916-P for sale
Opens an eBay search for this exact date and mint. Coin Curator does not list inventory, hold stock, or quote prices; verify each listing, seller, and return policy directly.
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Common questions
How many 1916-P Walking Liberty half dollars were minted?
The Philadelphia Mint struck 608,000 1916-P Walking Liberty half dollars for circulation. That is the 6th lowest business-strike mintage of the 65 date and mintmark combinations in the series.
Is the 1916-P Walking Liberty half dollar a key date?
Coin Curator labels it a key date, assigned from reported mintage alone: under 750,000 struck is a key date and under 2,500,000 is a semi-key. The same thresholds are used for every series on this site, so the tiers are comparable between them. That label describes production, not market value or how hard the coin is to find today. The first year of Adolph A. Weinman's design, introduced in the 1916 recoinage that also replaced the dime and quarter. The mintmark sits on the obverse below the motto for this year only and part of the next, which makes 1916 and early 1917 visually distinct from the rest of the series.
What should I check before buying a 1916-P Walking Liberty half dollar?
Verify the certification number on the grading service's own lookup page, match the listing photographs to the certification record, check for cleaning, and compare the mintmark shape and position against published photographs of the genuine issue. Confirm where the mintmark sits before judging the coin: 1916 and the early 1917 issues carry it on the obverse below IN GOD WE TRUST, everything later carries it on the reverse at lower left. A listing that describes the wrong position is describing a different issue.
Why do sources give different mintage figures for the 1916-P?
Proofs were struck in 1916 and 1917 but never formally reported, and they are vanishingly rare: Breen recorded seeing four 1916 proofs, and only three 1917 proofs are confirmed. The regularly reported proof mintages for this series begin in 1936.
Related dates
Guides for this coin
All guides →Walking Liberty Set Building
A multi-decade Adolph A. Weinman series with meaningful date, mint, strike, and condition challenges. Build a coin-by-coin research plan.
1 min readMarket ContextJunk Silver vs Graded Silver: Which Is the Better Hold?
Pre-1965 US silver coins (junk silver) trade on melt value plus a small premium. Graded examples of the same coins trade on numismatics. Which strategy actually wins long-term?
1 min readEducationWhat Makes a Coin a “Key Date”, and Why It Drives Value
Coins from the same series can differ sharply in availability and demand. Learn how date, mintmark, variety, grade, and surfaces shape key-date research.
1 min readBuying GuideApproachable Key-Date Coins to Research First
Seven dates that teach scarcity, identification, grade tradeoffs, and counterfeit-aware buying, without promising a fixed price or resale result.
1 min readMintage sources
Mintage figures are U.S. Mint production records, cross-checked against the published tables below on 2026-07-31. Where those tables disagree, the disagreement is disclosed on the affected page rather than resolved silently.
- CoinMintages.com, Walking Liberty half dollar mintages — Reports the 1917 obverse and reverse mintmark issues separately, and lists proofs by year.
- LandOfCoins, Walking Liberty half dollar mintage — Independent table carrying business strikes and proofs in separate columns. Agrees on all 65 issues.
- Wikipedia, "Walking Liberty half dollar" — No mintage table, but states a series proof total of 74,400, which matches the sum of the seven reported proof figures.
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