1944 Philippine 50 Centavos Mule Coin

A lot of collectors are not aware of the 2 varieties that exist of the otherwise quite unspectacular 1944 50c coin from the Philippines. I say unspectacular because the design remained essentially the same for the preceding 40 years, all denominations up until 1958 had this design and over 19,000,000 50c coins were struck in 1944 alone. The old coin books don’t refer to a second variety – in fact Neil Schafer’s only comment on this 50c coin in his famous book from 1961 was :

“No specific notes on this type of Fifty Centavos piece are needed.”
Neil Schafer – “United States Territorial Coinage for the Philippine Islands”.

In 2019 (18th November) the PCGS published an article entitled “PCGS Recognizes 1944-S 50c U.S. Philippines Obverse of 1907-1921 Mule”. It’s amazing that 75 years after these coins were released discoveries are still being made/acknowledged.

The Numista website refers to a “Type 1” and “Type 2” of this coin – but does not specifically refer to a mule. It does describe Type 1 as showing “…strong grooves along the mountainside (the Mayon volcano). Called verticle striations”. The striations are exactly as they were on the 1907-1921 dies. They are essentially therefore listing the mule as the Type 1 (and rightly or wrongly I have done so on this site as well).

Coins in question are affected only on the obverse where a 1907-1921 die was used – the reverse remain identical. All 50c Philippine coins from 1944 have the ‘S’ mint mark.

Identifying the 1944 50c Mule

At first glance it may not be easy to spot all of the differences. These are the key things to look for on the mule:

The image of Mount Mayon clearly has vertical striations and is missing a bump on the right side of the mountain.
There are more details in the woman’s hair – most noticeable around the letter ‘C’ in ‘Centavos’.
The smoke plume coming from Mount Mayon are more detailed.

Vertical Striations: