Walking Liberty Half Dollar Melt Value

As of July 18, 2026, with silver at $56.01 per troy ounce, a Walking Liberty half dollar has a melt value of $20.26. Every coin in the series contains 0.3617 troy ounces of pure silver, five times the content of a silver dime.

The specification is shared by every 90 percent US half dollar: 12.50 grams gross weight, 90 percent silver, 11.25 grams (0.3617 troy ounces) of pure metal. Two halves make $1 of face value holding 0.7234 ounces, the standard face-value math for junk silver. Walking Liberty halves usually cost a little more per ounce than Franklin or 1964 Kennedy halves because of the design's popularity, so compare prices across all three on the silver coin melt values table before buying, or value a stack with the junk silver calculator.

Adolph A. Weinman's 1916 design is widely considered one of the most beautiful ever placed on a US coin: Liberty strides toward the sunrise draped in the American flag, carrying branches of laurel and oak, with a rising sun at her feet. The reverse eagle perches on a mountain pine sapling. The design debuted in 1916, the same year as Weinman's Mercury dime, and ran through 1947 across three mints. Its afterlife is the real proof of its stature: when the American Silver Eagle bullion coin (authorized by Congress in 1985) debuted in 1986, the US Mint chose Weinman's Walking Liberty obverse, unchanged in essentials, for the new coin, and it has appeared on hundreds of millions of Silver Eagles since. For stackers this creates a fun arbitrage of aesthetics: a circulated Walking Liberty half delivers the same design as a Silver Eagle at a much lower premium per ounce of silver, albeit in 90 percent fineness instead of .999. See the American Silver Eagle melt value page for the modern coin's numbers.

Each row multiplies the half dollar's 0.3617 ounces of silver by a round spot price. A shortcut: a 90 percent half is worth about 36 percent of an ounce of silver.

Identical bullion specifications apply to Franklin halves (1948 to 1963) and the 1964 Kennedy half, so all three trade at the same melt value.

The series splits into an expensive early era and a bullion-priced late era. The 1916 to 1921 issues were struck in low numbers, and the 1921 dates from all three mints rank among the scarcest circulation halves of the 20th century, prized in every grade. Most 1930s branch-mint dates also carry real collector premiums in better condition. By contrast, the 1940 to 1947 dates were minted heavily, and worn examples form the bulk of the "Walkers" sold by bullion dealers at melt plus a modest design premium above Franklin pricing. The safe rule: anything dated before 1934 deserves a date-and-grade check before being sold as bullion, while common circulated 1940s coins are safely priced off the live melt figure above. Typical premium ranges by product are on our coin premium tracker.