1973 half dollar errors: the list, the sales, the myths

A worn 1973 Kennedy half dollar is worth its face value, 50 cents, or a hair more: NGC's price guide, last updated in October 2022, lists $0.60 for every circulated grade. There is no silver 1973 half; every one was struck in copper-nickel clad. NGC, a major coin grading company, catalogues two 1973 varieties, and both are Denver coins: a doubled die on the front (FS-101) and a "No FG" coin. It lists nothing for Philadelphia. The money is in one-off mint errors, coins that went badly wrong in the press, and most of the expensive ones are 1973-S proofs, with a few from Denver. The documented error sales we found ran from $348 to $10,800 per coin, so the price depends on which error it is and on its condition.

Reading your 1973 half

The mint mark is a small letter on the front, Kennedy's side. A D means Denver. No letter at all means Philadelphia: the US Mint says a coin with no mint mark comes from Philadelphia, and Philadelphia put no P on half dollars until 1980. An S means San Francisco, which in 1973 made only proofs, the mirror-finished coins sold in sets to collectors and never put into change. The 1974 half with no mint mark is the same story a year later.

The US Mint gives the clad half as 11.34 grams and 30.61 millimeters, with a reeded (grooved) edge. PCGS prints 11.30 grams on its pages for these coins; the Mint and NGC both say 11.34, and we go with the Mint.

1973 half dollar error list

These are the sales with an error named, a lot number and a price we could read. All sold at Heritage, buyer's fee included. They come from Greysheet (a dealer price guide) and NGC Auction Central, read October 27, 2026. A planchet is the blank metal disc a coin is struck on, so "struck on a five-cent planchet" means a half dollar design pressed onto a blank meant for a nickel.

A die is the hardened steel stamp that presses the design into the blank. "Clashed dies" means the two dies hit each other with no blank between them and left faint marks of one design on the other. The $10,800 coin is listed with Heritage's own wording because the catalog title is all we could read of its description.

Four more high prices show up in NGC Auction Central with no description we could read: a 1973-D MS67 NGC at $11,750 (2016), and 1973-S proofs at $7,500 (2022), $4,320 (2020) and $2,220 (2021). They stay out of the table because we don't know what made them worth that.

The 1973-D doubled die

A doubled die is a die that was itself made with a doubled image, so every coin it strikes shows the same doubling. NGC's variety list has exactly one for 1973 halves, the 1973-D Doubled Die Obverse, FS-101 (the reference number collectors use; the error club CONECA calls it DDO-001). The front of the coin is the obverse. Heritage sold one in its March 2024 Kevin Flynn Collection of Die Varieties auction and described the lot as the Flynn plate coin. The "Flynn Commentary" in that listing places the doubling on IN GOD WE TRUST, with more on the date and LIBERTY.

NGC publishes no separate count or price for it. Two sales we could read:

• $446.50 for an MS65 PCGS, Heritage, September 2016 (lot 131639-27226, on both NGC Auction Central and Greysheet).
• $129 for an AU58 ANACS, the lot described as the Flynn plate coin, Heritage, March 4, 2024 (lot 63270-93001, Greysheet).

The other Denver variety is the "No FG". FG are the initials of Frank Gasparro, who designed the back, and on a No FG coin they cannot be seen under 5x magnification, according to an article written for PCGS. NGC lists the 1973-D No FG with no description, census or price, and we found no sale.

The $6,600 "record" for a no-mint-mark 1973 half

PCGS shows an auction record of $6,600 on its page for the plain 1973 half, the Philadelphia coin. That coin is a Denver half overstruck on a 1972-D cent: an already finished penny went through the half dollar press and was stamped again. Heritage writes its date in brackets, (1973)-D, because the 1973 does not show on the coin. It sold at Heritage in August 2024, graded MS66 Red by NGC (lot 1376-5450, on both PCGS and Greysheet). It says nothing about an ordinary Philadelphia coin.

The real ceiling for a normal 1973 Philadelphia half in NGC Auction Central is $812, paid twice for MS67 PCGS coins at Teletrade in 2007 and 2008. For Denver, the top regular sale there is $504 (MS67 NGC, October 2019), and Greysheet's recent MS67 sales sit between $84 and $109. The PCGS record of $1,704 on the Denver page is the 40% off-center error in the table above, not a regular coin.

1973 half dollar value by grade

Unworn coins are graded MS60 to MS70 (MS stands for mint state, meaning no wear), proofs PR or PF60 to 70, and a higher number means fewer marks. Our guide to how coins are graded covers the scale, and other years are in our Kennedy half dollar values. NGC's price guide:

Both columns were last updated October 17, 2022, so treat them as old. For the 1973-S proof, NGC lists $4 in PF65, $9 in PF67, $12.50 in PF68, $22.50 in PF69 and $25 for a PF69 Cameo (updated February 2023). It gives no PF70 price; a PR70 Deep Cameo graded by PCGS sold for $1,560 at Heritage in June 2019, and the latest PF70 Ultra Cameo in NGC Auction Central brought $854 in July 2026.

A census is a grading service's count of the coins it has graded. NGC's, read October 27, 2026, holds 574 Philadelphia coins with 14 at MS67 and none higher; 935 Denver coins with three at MS68 at the top; and 1,872 proofs, 1,160 of them at PF69 and none at PF70.

Myths about 1973 halves

Error or damage

A mint error happened before the coin left the press; a dent, a scrape or a coin squeezed flat afterward is damage and adds nothing. A scale is the cheapest first test for the wrong-planchet kind: a half struck on a quarter blank weighs about what a quarter does (Heritage weighed one at 5.6 grams), nowhere near 11.34. Our guide to mint errors versus damage shows the common lookalikes.

Before you sell or send it off

No photo settles a grade or proves an error. Weigh the coin, leave it uncleaned (cleaning removes value), and if it could be worth real money, have a dealer look at it in hand or send it to PCGS or NGC.

Buck is our app for iPhone and Android. You photograph the front, then the back, a single coin per shot. It can name the coin as a 1973 Kennedy half and show an estimate where its price guide has one, which is never an offer to buy; it cannot grade the coin or confirm an error.

Sources

PCGS CoinFacts for the three mintages, its 11.30 gram figure and its $6,600 and $1,704 auction records; NGC Coin Explorer for the clad composition and the proof list with no 1973 silver; NGC's census and price guide (October 2022 for the business strikes, February 2023 for the proof); NGC VarietyPlus for the two Denver varieties; NGC Auction Central and Greysheet for the Heritage error sales, the doubled die sales and the regular-strike sales; a Heritage catalog page (archived copy) for the Flynn Commentary on the doubled die; an article written for PCGS on the No FG variety; NGC's explainer on doubled dies versus machine doubling; and the US Mint's half dollar and mint mark pages. Everything was read on October 27, 2026.