The truth about the Kennedy Half Dollar with the Hammer and Sickle

Tweet

When I was a kid my mom showed me this coin after one of her vacations to the US. It was she Kennedy half dollar she said with a communist hammer and sickle struck onto the the image of JFK. Growing up in the 60's we were taught that communism was bad and to see a communist symbol on a US coin was fascinating to me. My mom has since misplaced that coin which she has kept all these years. I've been looking for it thinking that this must be a rare coin. That's until I stumbled on this article about this very coin. It turns out that the so-called communist symbol was not a hammer and sickle but the initials of the coin's designer Gilroy Roberts. It was after all a GR not a hammer and sickle. It only shows that somethings are not what they seem. Another childhood fantasy betrayed by growing up. How about you? Have anything you thought was real as a kid that turned out to be untrue after all?