The Old Spanish Trail half dollar was a 1935 commemorative coin designed by coin dealer L.W. Hoffecker to honor Spanish officer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca's 16th century travels, though the travels did not pass near Hoffecker's hometown of El Paso, Texas featured on the coin. Hoffecker had pushed for prior commemorative coins and secured authorizing legislation for this one, purchasing the coins from the U.S. Mint at face value and selling them for personal profit, which he later denied to Congress despite the coins ostensibly benefiting a local museum. The coin's design featuring a cow's head has received mixed reviews.
The Old Spanish Trail half dollar was a 1935 commemorative coin designed by coin dealer L.W. Hoffecker to honor Spanish officer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca's 16th century travels, though the travels did not pass near Hoffecker's hometown of El Paso, Texas featured on the coin. Hoffecker had pushed for prior commemorative coins and secured authorizing legislation for this one, purchasing the coins from the U.S. Mint at face value and selling them for personal profit, which he later denied to Congress despite the coins ostensibly benefiting a local museum. The coin's design featuring a cow's head has received mixed reviews.
The Old Spanish Trail half dollar was a 1935 commemorative coin designed by coin dealer L.W. Hoffecker to honor Spanish officer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca's 16th century travels, though the travels did not pass near Hoffecker's hometown of El Paso, Texas featured on the coin. Hoffecker had pushed for prior commemorative coins and secured authorizing legislation for this one, purchasing the coins from the U.S. Mint at face value and selling them for personal profit, which he later denied to Congress despite the coins ostensibly benefiting a local museum. The coin's design featuring a cow's head has received mixed reviews.
coin struck by the United States Bureau of the Mint in 1935. It was designed by L. W. Hoffecker, a coin dealer who had been the moving force behind the effort for a Gadsden Purchase half dollar, vetoed by President Herbert Hoover in 1930, and he sought another commemorative coin that he could control if authorizing legislation was passed. He chose the travels of Spanish officer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca in the early 16th century. Though Hoffecker's hometown of El Paso, Texas, is featured on the coin, Cabeza de Vaca came nowhere near its site. Hoffecker purchased the coins from the Mint at face value and sold them to collectors, ostensibly on behalf of the local museum, but in fact for his personal profit, something he later denied before Congress. His design for the coin, featuring the head of a cow (the English meaning of cabeza de vaca), has brought mixed reviews from numismatic commentators.