1921-S Walking Liberty Half Dollar
Key dateThe third of the 1921 keys. Its mintage is higher than the other two, but it circulated more heavily and is the hardest of the three to find in mint state.
Mintage
- Business strikes
- 548,000
- Mint
- San Francisco (S)
- Mintage rank
- 5 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 24 San Francisco issues in the series it is the 2nd smallest. Of the 1,002,000 struck across all mints in 1921, this issue accounts for 55%. That is 2.6 times the Denver figure for the same year. The 1921 split ran San Francisco 548,000, Philadelphia 246,000 and Denver 208,000. The series median is 4,094,000, so fewer than half as many of these were struck as a typical date. Series-wide output fell that year: 1,002,000 against 12,547,000 in 1920. 1921 was the smallest production year of the entire series.
Every sentence above is computed from the mintage table on this page, not asserted separately.
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
Nothing about this date calls for a check beyond the ones that apply to any certified coin.
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 1921-Scertification 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 1921-S 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 1921-S Walking Liberty half dollars were minted?
The San Francisco Mint struck 548,000 1921-S Walking Liberty half dollars for circulation. That is the 5th lowest business-strike mintage of the 65 date and mintmark combinations in the series.
Is the 1921-S 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 third of the 1921 keys. Its mintage is higher than the other two, but it circulated more heavily and is the hardest of the three to find in mint state.
What should I check before buying a 1921-S 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.
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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