A bill passed through Congress without dissent and became law on June 21, 1934, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it, providing for 25,000 half dollars.

Congress, during the early years of commemorative coinage, usually designated a specific organization allowed to buy them at face value and to sell them to the public at a premium.

The most significant changes were an increase in the authorized mintage from 10,000 to 25,000 and a requirement that the federal government not be put to any expense in the creation of the models from which dies to strike the coins could be prepared.

There was no debate; the only questions were by William McFarlane of Texas, asking if the coin would cost the federal government anything and if Connecticut was paying the expenses.

The latter commission was charged by a 1921 executive order by President Warren G. Harding with rendering advisory opinions on public artworks, including coins.

Swartwout set out the procedure to Fisher and told him that the commission member likely to take the leading role was sculptor Lee Lawrie.

Fisher sent photographs of Kreis's plaster models to Swartwout and Lawrie, as well as to Fine Arts Commission chairman Charles Moore and to Acting Director of the Mint Mary M.

Swartwout wrote to Moore on the 15th, telling him that the coin was strongly supported by art history professor Theodore Sizer of Yale University, a member of the Tercentenary Commission.

[15] The models were reduced to coin-sized hubs by the Medallic Art Company of New York; these were shipped to the Philadelphia Mint and used to make dies with which to strike the coins.

[16] The obverse of the coin depicts the Charter Oak and is based on a painting by Charles DeWolf Brownell, who had begun his work in 1855, a year before lightning felled the tree.

"[13] In anticipation of a complaint that the leaves on the oak were proportionately larger than they should be, Professor Sizer had told Swartwout that they needed to be enlarged to show at all,[18] something Anthony Swiatek and Walter Breen, in their 1988 book on commemorative coins, call "perfectly good grounds".

[12] Art historian Cornelius Vermeule, in his volume on the artistry of U.S. coins and medals, stated that Kreis "used the great oak ... as a most effective composition on the obverse, and a massive eagle, thrusting like a rocket, on the reverse".

[20] He noted, "all elements of the Connecticut Tercentenary coin blend superbly, the mottos and aphorisms disappearing amid the leafy clusters on the obverse and the balance of the opposite side as successful as for the Eagle of 1907 (by Augustus Saint-Gaudens)".

[22] In addition to the coins sent to Hartford, the Mint struck 18 pieces, reserved for inspection and testing at the 1936 meeting of the annual Assay Commission.

[23] The United States Post Office Department issued a three-cent stamp for the anniversary on April 26, 1935, also depicting the Charter Oak.