1936-S Walking Liberty Half Dollar

Common date

A common San Francisco date.

Mintage

Business strikes: 3,884,000
Mint: San Francisco (S)
Mintage rank: 31 of 65

Rank 1 is the lowest business-strike mintage in the series. Mintage is what the Mint produced, not what survives: millions of silver dollars were melted under the Pittman Act of 1918 without the dates being recorded.

Scarcity tier

Common 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. The first places to lose detail are Liberty's head and her left hand, and on many dates a fully struck example simply does not exist in quantity. Flatness there is usually a striking characteristic rather than circulation wear, and the grading services account for it. Judge wear instead on the highest points of the breast and knee, and compare any coin against images of the same date and mint rather than against a sharply struck coin from the 1940s.

What to check before buying

1Verify the certification number on the grading service's own lookup page, not on the listing. A photograph of a label is not verification.
2Match the coin in the listing photographs to the coin described on the certification record, including the grade and any variety attribution.
3Look for cleaning: unnatural brightness, fine parallel hairlines in the fields, and a flat, lifeless surface under angled light.
4Check the mintmark shape and position against published photographs of the genuine issue. Added and altered mintmarks are the most common silver dollar alteration.
5Read the seller's return policy before bidding or buying, and confirm it covers authenticity and grade disputes.

Coin Curator does not grade, authenticate, or appraise coins, and publishes no price or population data. These are verification steps, not a valuation. Read the grading guide.

Verify a certification number

If a 1936-Sis offered as certified, look the number up on the grading service’s own site and confirm the date, mintmark, grade, and any variety attribution match the listing. A photograph of a label proves nothing on its own.

PCGS cert lookup NGC cert lookup ANACS cert lookup

Each service publishes its own guarantee with conditions and exclusions. Compare PCGS, NGC and ANACS.

Find a 1936-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.

Affiliate link: Coin Curator may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Disclosure.

Search eBay for 1936-S

Common questions

How many 1936-S Walking Liberty half dollars were minted?

The San Francisco Mint struck 3,884,000 1936-S Walking Liberty half dollars for circulation. That is the 31st lowest business-strike mintage of the 65 date and mintmark combinations in the series.

Is the 1936-S Walking Liberty half dollar a key date?

Coin Curator labels it a common 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. A common San Francisco date.

What should I check before buying a 1936-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.

Mintage 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.

Spotted an error? Submit a correction.