Kennedy half dollar value: which years are silver
You have a Kennedy half and want to know if there is silver in it. 1964 is 90%, 1965 to 1970 are 40%, 1971 on is none, and here are the figures.
9 min read, updated September 21, 2026.
In the Buck index
Kennedy Half DollarUnited States, 1964, Silver (.900)$19.64 to $25.32
Franklin Half DollarUnited States, 1948–1963, Silver (.900)$26.67 to $32.46
A Kennedy half dollar made for circulation has silver in it if it is dated 1964 through 1970, and none at all if it is dated 1971 or later. That is most of the value question. The PCGS price guide, read on 21 September 2026, puts a lightly worn 1964 at $36 and any 1965 to 1970 half at $12, while CoinWeek's line on the copper-nickel ones is that a circulated Kennedy half is worth face value. Silver halves kept being made after 1970, but only for collectors: PCGS notes that silver proofs returned in 1992, and the 1998-S further down was sold inside a set and nowhere else.
Prices here are quoted by grade, because that is how the guides quote them. Coins are graded on a scale of 1 to 70. Grade 40 is a coin with light wear that spent time in tills. Sixty and above is mint state, meaning it was never spent, and each step from 60 to 70 is a cleaner, sharper example of the same coin, with prices that climb much faster than the numbers suggest. PR is that same scale for a proof: a coin struck for collectors on polished dies, the steel stamps that press the design into the metal, and never meant for change. SP is for what PCGS calls a special strike, the label it puts on the 1964 Special Mint Set halves and on the 1998-S below. Coin grading in plain terms has the rest.
The three eras
| Years | What it is | Weight | PCGS guide, grade 40, 21 Sep 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1964 | 90% silver | 12.50 g | $36 |
| 1965 to 1970 | 40% silver, in layers | 11.50 g | $12 |
| 1971 on | copper-nickel clad | 11.34 g | $1 where the guide prices one, $2 for the 1776-1976 |
The 1964 is silver all the way through. The 1965 to 1970 coins are layered, with silver in both parts: CoinWeek gives outer layers of 80% silver bonded to a core that is about 21% silver and the rest copper. From 1971 the Mint's own specification is 8.33% nickel with the balance copper, and no silver in the coins made for circulation.
The edge is the quickest way to place one. A clad half shows a copper stripe at the rim, a 1965 to 1970 half a much fainter grey line from that copper-heavy core, and a 1964 none at all. Worn coins lose weight, so treat a scale as a tie-breaker. How to tell if a coin is silver has the other tests.
The 1967 in the jar
The 40% years are the ones people miss. A 1967 Kennedy half in a change jar looks like a modern coin and is not one. 1967 is the year they made most of them, 295,046,978, the highest mintage of the silver-clad run, which is why it is the one that turns up.
The mint marks of those years are worth knowing, because they trip people up. There are none at all on 1965, 1966 and 1967 coins: the Mint left them off, and sold Special Mint Sets at $4 in place of the usual proof and mint sets. Every ordinary coin struck in 1968, 1969 and 1970, what the guides call a business strike as opposed to a proof, came from Denver and carries a D. So a 1965 to 1970 half with no letter is one of the three middle years, not a Philadelphia coin from 1969. Where to look for a mint mark has the position on each coin.
What the silver is actually worth
The PCGS bullion ticker showed silver at $66.17 an ounce on the morning of 21 September 2026. A 1964 half carries 11.25 g of pure silver, which is 0.3617 troy ounces, so its metal came to $23.93 that day. A 1965 to 1970 half carries 4.60 g, or 0.1479 troy ounces, which is $9.79. Melt value means that figure and nothing else: the metal, with no allowance for the date, the mint mark or the condition.
Both sit under the guide prices above, and the gap is what a collector pays over the metal. The silver melt calculator runs the arithmetic against today's price, and which US coins are silver has the cutoff dates for the other denominations.
The dates worth pulling out of a tin
| Issue | Mintage | Why it is not an ordinary half | PCGS guide, 21 Sep 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1964 and 1964-D | 273,304,004 and 156,205,446 | the only 90% silver Kennedys struck for circulation | $36 at grade 40, $475 at MS67 for the P and $500 for the D |
| 1970-D | 2,150,000 | 1970 mint sets only, last business strike with silver in it | $12 at grade 40, $46 at MS65, $6,750 at MS67 |
| 1987-P and 1987-D | 2,890,758 each | mint sets only | $1 at grade 40, $5 at MS60, $22 at MS65 for the P and $15 for the D |
| 1998-S matte silver | not settled | sold only in a $59.95 two-coin set | $115 at SP64, $375 at SP70 |
| 1964 SMS | no figure exists, about a dozen known | never announced or sold by the Mint | $20,000 at SP64, $150,000 at SP68 |
| the other clad dates | 1.7 to 302 million a mint | ordinary coins | $1 at grade 40, $2 for the 1776-1976 |
1970-D is the one worth knowing by heart. It was struck for the 1970 Uncirculated Mint Set and for nothing else, and CoinWeek reports the Mint did not say so until the ordering window for those sets had already closed; 2,038,134 sets were made. At 2,150,000 coins it is the lowest-mintage business strike of the series through 2005, and the last one with silver in it. A worn one is still a $12 coin. The money is at the top of the scale: PCGS guides an MS67 at $6,750, and CoinWeek records a PCGS MS67+ selling at GreatCollections for $10,694 on 14 March 2021.
1987-P and 1987-D went into mint sets and nowhere else, 2,890,758 at each mint, which PCGS calls one of the scarcer coins in the series. That still only buys $5 at MS60. The 1987 halves that made real money were at the very top: an NGC MS68 1987-P took $4,800 at Stack's Bowers on 22 August 2018, and a PCGS MS68 1987-D took $3,055 at Heritage on 29 October 2015.
The 1998-S is the one older articles call a matte proof. PCGS does not class it as a proof at all: its label is Special Strike. It is 90% silver at 12.50 g, sold only inside a two-piece Kennedy Collector's Set with a Robert Kennedy silver dollar at $59.95. Its mintage is not settled: PCGS's own field says 62,000 while its narrative lists 62,000, 62,350, 63,250 and 64,000, and Wikipedia gives 64,141. PCGS calls it the rarest of all Kennedy halves and guides it between $115 and $375.
The varieties, and how to tell
The 1964 Accented Hair proof. The first 1964 proof dies carried heavier, more separated strands of hair above and behind Kennedy's ear, and the Mint changed them early in the run. CoinWeek's second diagnostic is the I in LIBERTY, whose lower-left serif looks missing or cut off. It exists only on 1964 proofs, never on a Philadelphia or Denver coin out of a roll. PCGS guides it at $80 in PR65 and $1,000 in PR69, and its auction record for one is $3,120, a PR69 at Heritage on 30 December 2020.
The 1964 SMS. These are satin-finish 1964 halves the Mint never announced, packaged or sold. They surfaced through Stack's auctions in the early 1990s from the estate of the New York dealer Lester Merkin, and CoinWeek puts the number known at about a dozen. A PCGS SP68 sold for $156,000 at Stack's Bowers on 15 August 2019, lot 5231 of the ANA Rarities Night sale, at $130,000 hammer plus the 20% buyer's premium. A PCGS SP67 took $108,000 at Heritage on 25 April 2019. CoinWeek's warning is the useful part: the difference between this and a normal 1964 can be over $100,000, and telling the two apart is a grading service's job.
No FG. Frank Gasparro's initials sit on the back, between the eagle's left leg and the tail feathers. Dies polished too hard lost them, and CoinWeek's standard is strict: no trace at all, and a faint or partial FG does not qualify. There is no "weak FG" designation. It calls the 1972-D the rarest circulation strike of them and the 1982-P the most common, and PCGS lists a 1966 SMS No "FG" on its special-strike guide.
1964-D doubled dies and repunched mint marks. PCGS attributes a doubled die obverse, a tripled die and a quadrupled die for the 1964-D, plus the D over D repunchings FS-501 to FS-504. Its guide of 21 September 2026 puts the doubled die at $200 in MS65 and $600 in MS66, the tripled die at $165 in MS65, the quadrupled at $350 and the FS-501 repunched mint mark at $140. These are attributions: the coin goes to a grading service and comes back labelled, or it does not.
Before any of it, rule out a knock or a scrape that happened after the coin left the Mint. Error coins versus damage has the difference.
What people arrive believing
- That every Kennedy half is rare. CoinWeek traces this one to how hard they are to find in change, which is a different question from how many were made. A circulated copper-nickel Kennedy is worth face value.
- That the Accented Hair proofs were the first 50,000 struck. No official mintage for the variety survives. CoinWeek's position is that figures like that should not be quoted as though they were established.
- That the Mint sold a 1964 Special Mint Set. It did not. Special Mint Sets were sold for 1965, 1966 and 1967, and the 1964 SMS coins surfaced privately in the early 1990s.
- That the Mint stopped making half dollars after 2001. Since 2002 they have been made mainly for annual sets and other collector products, in the Mint's own wording, but the Federal Reserve can still order them, and it did: 30,200,000 at Philadelphia and 27,800,000 at Denver in 2023.
Sorting a tin of them
Date first, grade second, and the date does most of the work. 1964 in one pile, 1965 to 1970 in a second, 1971 and later in a third, and weigh anything you cannot place. A 1974 half with no mint mark is a Philadelphia coin and an ordinary one: 201,596,000 of them were struck. The halves made for 1975 and 1976 carry the 1776-1976 dual date and Independence Hall on the back, and they belong with the Bicentennial quarter.
Buck is ours, so weigh this accordingly. It names the type from a photograph, and gives the guide's range where the guide has one. The grade it cannot read, and on a Kennedy the grade is the whole story: the same 1970-D is a $12 coin or a $6,750 one on that alone. It takes one coin at a time, front then back, on iPhone and Android. Anything that looks like four figures goes to a grading service or a dealer who can handle it, and how to sell a coin covers what comes after that.
What this article is based on: the United States Mint's half dollar page for the composition, the weight and the 2002 change; the PCGS Price Guide and PCGS CoinFacts, read on 21 September 2026, for every guide figure, mintage and auction record; CoinWeek on the silver-clad years, the 1970-D, the 1964 coin and its $156,000 sale and the vanishing FG initials; Wikipedia's mintage table and CoinNews on the 2023 production run as the second reading on the mintages; and the Stack's Bowers lot page for the date of the $156,000 sale.
