1893 US Columbian exposition silver Half Dollar with new Holder. Superb Toning.
This coin was produced for the  World’s Columbian Exposition that took
place between the 1st of May to October 30, 1893, in Chicago, Illinois,
which celebrated the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Columbus to
America.
According to Tom DeLorey Coinage, May 2016, p. 9, the Columbian
Exposition half-dollar “came about when the organization putting on the
World’s Fair requested a grant from the U.S. Treasury of $5 million to
help build the fairgrounds so it could open.” The Treasury, however,
gave “only $2.5 million due to the prevailing hard economic times.”
DeLorey goes on to say that someone “connected with the Fair Authority
got the brilliant idea that if the Treasury would provide the $2.5
million in the form of five million commemorative half dollars,” then
the Fair would need only “to sell the coins for a dollar each” in order
to obtain the extra $2.5 million dollars needed. Because of hard
economic times, however, “only a few hundred thousand were sold at the
premium, the rest were either released into circulation at face value or
melted.