1915-S $50 Panama-Pacific 50 Dollar Round MS65 NGC. The Panama-Pacific International Exposition was a World's Fair event, held to commemorate the opening of the Panama Canal and the recovery of San Francisco after the great earthquake of 1906. The 1915-S Panama-Pacific fifty dollar gold piece was part of an ambitious five-coin set of commemorative coins issued in conjunction with the Exposition. Numismatic entrepreneur Farran Zerbe conceived this unprecedented program of commemorative coinage, with the set consisting of two fifty dollar gold pieces, round and octagonal versions, a quarter eagle, a gold dollar, and a silver half dollar. The coins were initially offered individually, or in sets, with the sets displayed in velvet-lined black leatherette cases. More purchasing options were offered later to improve lagging sales, including sets encased in elaborate glass-fronted copper frames from Shreve & Co., a local jewelry firm. Heritage Auctions is privileged to offer a spectacular Gem representative of the scarcer round fifty dollar piece in this important lot. The design for the two fifty dollar commemoratives was by sculptor Robert Aitken, who was born in San Francisco in 1878. The obverse features a helmeted Minerva, the Roman goddess of industry. The reverse features her companion owl (wisdom), perched on a branch of western pine. The octagonal and round fifty dollar gold commemoratives were intended to have a maximum distribution of 1,500 pieces each, but sales fell far short of those objectives. The Pan-Pac fifties were priced at $100 each, a prohibitively high price for most collectors of the time. As a result, only 483 examples of the round fifty dollar coins were sold. The octagonal version fared a little better, but still only sold 645 pieces. The remainder were melted after sales closed.