Wikipedia:Today's featured article/April 17, 2023

The Roanoke Island, North Carolina, half dollar is a commemorative coin issued by the U.S. Bureau of the Mint in 1937. It commemorated the 350th anniversary of the Roanoke Colony, depicting on one side Sir Walter Raleigh (pictured), and on the other Eleanor Dare, holding her child, Virginia Dare, the first child of English descent born in an English colony in the Americas. The coin was one of many commemorative issues authorized by Congress in 1936. As the colony was founded in 1587, the coins were struck in 1937. William Marks Simpson, a sculptor who created several commemorative coins of the era, designed the coin. His work required only slight modification by the Commission of Fine Arts. The legislation allowed the Roanoke Island Memorial Association to buy at least 25,000 coins at a time before July 1937; they placed two orders for the minimum amount. Eventually, 21,000 were returned to the Mint for redemption and melting. Numismatic catalogs value the coin in the low hundreds of dollars.