The Stone Mountain Commemorative Half

Growing up in Georgia in the 1950's and 1960's I would travel with my father to Atlanta several times a year. Our route always took us along U.S.Highway 78 and thus we passed the unfinished carving on Stone Mountain twice on each trip. Neither of us thought the carving would ever be finished.It was just too massive and with two failures already it appeared to be someone's pipe dream and the State's nightmare.

By the time the carving project was restarted we were living elsewhere and it was not until we moved back to Atlanta in the mid-1970's that wecould appreciate the magnitude of the effort. Our family climbed the mountain on many Easter Sundays for sunrise services, and we lived close enoughto visit the park on weekends with our children. So, for many the memories of the mountain have nothing to do with many of the discussions we haveseen in recent months. But those discussions did spark some fresh interest in the Stone Mountain Half Dollar and the accompanying story.

Once we contacted other researchers and started to do our own investigation we realized that as a numismatist there was a lot to be learned. Wealso discovered that there is ample opportunity to contribute to the hobby through detailed research and examination of the coin. Our preferredmethod of presenting studies is to create a web site that will be a living, breathing work as more is understood and documented. This month we arelaunching a web site for that purpose at www.stonemountainhalf.com. We have no idea how long thisstudy will last but based on similar work this will take years. Our early investigation has revealed some fascinating things that we will build on aswe go.

There is a great story about the successes and failures of the attempts to create the carving that almost reads like a work of fiction.

The attempts to finance the carving produced a story all its own and created some of the rarest coin varieties (counterstamps) among all U.S.coins, many with a single known example and others that are documented but with no known examples

Stone Mountain Commemorative Half Research
It appears that the census of known counterstamped coins had not been updated since 1987 and we have already compiled an updated census that morethan doubles the previously documented coins http://www.stonemountainhalf.com/counterstampcensus.html

There is only one major DDO variety recognized by all the TPG's, but we are identifying as many dies and minor varieties as possible, and thereare many

No one has ever completed a full grading set nor documented the specific features by grade and we are well on our way to accomplishing this with16 grades in our collection and more in the pipeline http://www.stonemountainhalf.com/ourcollection.html

Our Morgan Dollar experience has made us aware that to do a complete study hundreds of coins will be needed, so there will be excellent materialat the end for anyone with an interest in this commemorative issue to study A by-product of any dedicated study is having all the coins under oneroof with consistent visual documentation for other collectors to study. Having coins that cover the full range of grades and dies is paramount, sowe are working with PCGS to have consistent high-quality images of every coin.

For each coin there is a dedicated research page with detailed notes and high-quality images denoting features of interest and die cracks. We havealready received help from several others who have studied the Stone Mountain Half in some detail, so there is existing interest and knowledge todraw on in the study. To keep a conversation going we will use existing numismatic forums to publish new findings and gain insight into the knowledgeof other collectors.

Our certified inventory on launch day is 48 coins, and we have more than 50 in the pipeline with a goal of 100 documented coins by year end. Ourexperience with other coin types has been that narrowly focused studies of a single coin often produce new and fascinating details for collectors.So, the adventure begins, and we hope this will spark interest in other collectors to do similar work.

To visit the web site, see: www.stonemountainhalf.com