a bare-breasted Lady Liberty!

Good morning and welcome to the August 8th edition of a Wonderful Wednesday! If you read almost any article about the 1916 Standing Liberty Quarter, you would believe that the “Bare Breasted Liberty” design was changed after only two months of production because of the scandalous nudity of the coin, the prudishness of the population, and a mass public outcry. So let’s again borrow Sherman & Peabody’s WABAC Machine and visit the U.S some 102 years ago. Before we leave, let’s refill our cups and pull up a chair and attempt to find the “real story” of this fascinating coin. Freda Payne greets me this morning with her 1970 hit, Band of Gold.

Gold is currently up +$1.00 this morning at $1,211.50.

Silver is currently up +$0.03 at $15.37.

Platinum is currently even at $828.

Palladium is currently down -$8.00 at $904.

Ahh, the Dog Days of Summer! Metals have been trading incredibly tight so far this month. I don’t expect much from tomorrow’s CoT (Commitment of Traders) Report.

The year is 1916 and the Victorian Era is still in control of the morality of our nation. As is reported, Dr. Francis Clark, the founder and president of the Christian Endeavor Society, declared that the modern indecent dance was an offense against womanly purity. And in government, a bill is pending in Utah providing a fine and imprisonment for woman who wear skirts higher than three inches above the ankle While in the Virginia legislature a bill forbidding women from wearing any garment that displayed more than three inches of her throat is pending a vote. As we know, the “Roaring Twenties” are just around the corner. How is that possible? The loosening of morales is happening. F. Scott Fitzgerald is writing “This Side of Paradise” about women that were into “petting parties, and wrote that they had kissed dozens of men and planned to kiss dozens more. So it’s easy to believe that the parents of America before our involvement in WWI would not have accepted a nude woman on a coin.

However, the reality is way different than what we’ve been led to believe. Hermon McNeil, the designer and sculpter had been awarded the contract on the new quarter and his new design was approved by the Director of the Mint Robert Woolley in late May. After casting was completed and coins were struck, they found that the placements of both the obverse (heads) and reverse (tails) reliefs (parts of the coin that are raised above the surface) were competing with available metal causing the coin to appear extremely worn. Here is a photo of the stunning casting by McNeil.

As I understand it, by mid-October, unbeknownst to McNeil, the Mint had modified the design to improve metal flow and sharpen the relief image. With the final changes made and a new casting complete, production began in December with only 52,000 coins struck making an immediate rarity of the 1916 coin.

When McNeil saw what had been done to his design, he immediately requested and received authority to clean up his design and combine the best elements of both designs. Here’s where things get interesting! If you notice, Lady Liberty holds an olive branch signifying peace in her right hand while holding the "Shield of War" close to her in her left hand. Well, with the U.S. involvement in WWI starting April 6th of 1917, just as Hermon McNeil was finishing his modifications, he felt that Liberty needed to be wearing chain mail as she entered the war.

So it wasn’t prudishness after all. It was World War I that caused her to dress for battle.

Well, I’ll let that be it for today. Go out there and make a difference! See ya later!

*Disclaimer: Precious Metal Musings™ is written for entertainment and news purposes only and should not be used in making purchases and/or sales of precious metals.