The two dollar bill is often thought of as a quirky piece of currency that belongs in a display case
more than it does a cash register.
But if there's one other monetary unit that rivals the $2 bill for its limited usage
and the misconceptions surrounding it, it's none other than the half dollar coin.
Although it takes four of these fifty-cent pieces to equal the value of a $2 bill,
the two items stack up as mostly equals in other areas.
For one thing, each of them are frequently hoarded because of a perception that they're rare or collector's items.
They also share a common bond in the gambling world...
... the $2 bill being associated with bets at a race track, and the halves once used for 50-cent antes in the poker arena,
as well as a way to pay off the odd amount of a blackjack win.
You may also find that both items are hard to get at your local bank,
although on this particular visit, a hidden camera shows I got one and not the other.
It took a trip to a local coin dealer to find out even more about the half dollar.
Shop owner Gary Tancer started off with a history lesson.
The first half dollar was minted in 1794.
That was the Flowing Hair half dollar.
Those are highly collectible. Typically these coins trade for thousands of dollars in low grade condition
and in Gem you can spend up to a million dollars for a gem 1794 half dollar.
That was followed by the Draped Bust half dollar and then the Capped Bust half dollar.
This is a Capped Bust half. They started making these in 1807. This was just a fifty-cent piece,
this was used as our money. A coin like this goes for around $450.
You also had the Seated Liberty Half Dollar, dated 1839 to 1891,
and later, Walking Liberty half dollars, from 1916 to 1947.
In between those issues, there was yet another design.
These are circulated Barber halves. Charles T. Barber was the designer of the coin.
So they called them Barber halves. And people think they're rare but they're not as rare as you would think
because they made millions of every date. They started minting them in 1892 through 1915
but these coins we generally sell for arounf eight dollars each.
Meanwhile, the two dollar bill was going through different versions as well.
The first Federally-issued two arrived in 1862. Through the late 1800s,
you also had a variety of Legal Tender notes, Silver certificates, Treasury notes, National Bank Notes, and as of 1918, a Federal Reserve Bank Note,
which was the last of the large-size notes before the 1928 bill came in a smaller size with a red seal and serial numbers.
The red seal twos continued being made through 1963, which is about the same time period that another version of the half dollar was available.
Ben Franklin was the first noted figure that was on coins, started in 1948,
and it's a popular series but there's no rare coins in the Franklin series because they made millions of each date.
But if you go into your local coin shop, you're gonna be able to buy, basically, any Franklin halves
at the silver prices, what they are today. They run about, a little over $6.50 each right now.
The Franklin halves gave way to the Kennedy half dollar in 1964, which was a new issue designed to commemorate the recently-slain president.
This 1964 issue was the last of the half dollar coins to ever be comprised of 90% silver.
1965-70, they stopped making the haves 90% silver, they make 'em what we call Clad, 40% silver.
And then from 1971 and on, they're not silver.
Then came 1976 – our nation’s bicentennial – when both items underwent a change, which ironically, may have contributed to their decline.
The two dollar bill was completely redesigned, with green seals and serial numbers on the front,
and a depiction of John Trumbull’s Declaration of Independence on the back.
For the bicentennial half dollars, the changes were not as pronounced, but still significant.
So this is a 1976 bicentennial half dollar.
Exactly the same except for the year, when the bicentennial year they put 1776-1976
and you can see the differences in the reverses, was the only year they did that.
They put Independence Hall on the reverse whereas you have your typical eagle on the back
on the regular Kennedy half dollars.
Subsequent issues of the halves, beginning as early as 1977, went back to the old format.
But because of their uniqueness, the bicentennials were perceived as collector’s items.
People saved them because they thought they were going to be worth something one day.
and there's just so many that were saved... they're just plentiful.
The same thing happened with the newly-released two dollar bill.
Everybody would treat it as kind of a special bill.
and so people might well have just thought of this as something special for the bicentennial,
I'm gonna go home and keep this. And perhaps it didn't occur to them that well,
I could spend a lot of them too if I wanted to.
Both items began to be looked at in a different way, and things haven't changed in the last forty years.
It's a novelty more than anything else. Right now, it doesn't fit in.
So the two items have a lot of similarities, but there is one major area where they’re different.
Did you know they’re still printing $2 bills? – the last batch as recently as 2018.
But since 2002, half dollars have only been minted for collectors.
That could explain why this trip to the bank only netted me the paper currency.
That doesn't mean you can't still get them though.
You can order them from the banks directly, and they will get them from the Fed
and you can get, you know, rolls of half dollars still.
You know, you can still use them as money but I guarantee if you walked into a Target,
they'd give you a double look to see, "well, what's this?" They wouldn't know what it was.
The same thing might happen when you try to spend a two dollar bill, but according to Gary, they do have more sentimental value.
A $2 bill, they get one, they're more likely to save that, give it to the grandkids as a present or something like that..
We have packs of hundreds of them in here, but they made so many of them,
they'll never really be rare. But they're cool just to have.
So which one of the two items do you prefer? Which one is more practical?
You can share your thoughts about either of these two denominations in the comments below.