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Five dates on this coin, and not one is the year it was struck

Norfolk, Virginia got its own commemorative half dollar in 1937, meant to mark the 200th anniversary of its founding as a royal borough and the 100th anniversary of becoming a city, though by law the coin had to carry the earlier date of 1936. Designed by the husband-and-wife team William and Marjory Simpson, it shows the city's colonial seal on one side and, on the other, its ceremonial mace, a gift from Virginia's colonial governor that made Norfolk the only American city to still hold one from that era. That mace also carries a British crown, making this the only U.S. coin ever to depict royal imagery, which struck some buyers as an odd choice for American currency.

Getting the coin made was its own saga. Senator Carter Glass pushed a bill through Congress in 1936, unaware that a committee had quietly rewritten it to authorize medals instead of coins, following complaints from President Roosevelt that too many local commemoratives were being minted. Both Glass and the bill's House sponsor kept insisting they were arguing for coins even as they steered through legislation for medals, and the mix-up only came to light months later when a local booster went public with the story. Because collectors had no interest in medals, none were ever struck, and Glass had to start over with fresh legislation the following year to get an actual coin authorized.

By the time the corrected law passed and the Philadelphia Mint finally struck the coins in September 1937, the anniversaries being celebrated had already come and gone, and enthusiasm had cooled. Of the 25,000 coins made, nearly a third were eventually sent back to the mint and melted down after failing to sell at the $1.50 asking price. Critics were also unimpressed with the design itself, with one prominent numismatic historian calling the crowded obverse a low point in American coin artistry, though he allowed that the lettering and relief work showed real craftsmanship. Despite that rocky start, surviving examples became collectible over the following decades, with values climbing from a couple of dollars to hundreds by the twenty-first century.

The crown appears because it sits atop Norfolk's ceremonial mace, making this the sole U.S. coin to depict the British crown.

Read the whole of Norfolk, Virginia, Bicentennial half dollar on Wikipedia

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