Rovelstad had heard of other efforts to gain authorization for commemorative coins, which were sold by the Mint to a designated group at face value and then retailed to the public at a premium.

Hoffecker heard of the effort and contacted Rovelstad to offer his assistance—Hoffecker had been a force behind the Old Spanish Trail half dollar, issued in 1935 and distributed by him.

Unlike many commemorative coins of that era, the piece was not bought up by dealers and speculators, but was sold directly to collectors at the issue price.

[1] Sculptor Trygve Rovelstad (1903–1990), born to Norwegian immigrants in the United States, sought to erect a statue in his hometown of Elgin as a monument to those pioneers who had settled Illinois.

[3] Hoffecker, an El Paso, Texas, coin dealer, was then leading the committee in his hometown that was selling the Old Spanish Trail half dollar to the public.

[4] Although some recent commemoratives had sparked outcry from collectors that speculators had been allowed to buy up quantities of the new issues, Hoffecker would gain praise for equitably distributing the Old Spanish Trail piece.

These sculptors all want to incorporate their own ideas in the design and ask anywhere from $400.00 to $1,000.00 for their work, telling you what trouble it is to get the approval of the Commission of Fine Arts and many other things which do not exist.

"[7] In October 1935, Hoffecker made a formal offer, based on the bill, which called for 10,000 half dollars: he would pay the Elgin committee $12,000 and sell the coins at $2.00 each.

[7] Illinois Representative Chauncey Reed had introduced the Elgin coin legislation at Rovelstad's behest, and both the sculptor and Hoffecker worked with him to advance the bill through Congress.

In February 1936, Hoffecker, who had been appointed by ANA President T. James Clarke to lead a committee against abuses in the issuance of commemorative coins, went to Washington, passing through Chicago on his way to visit Rovelstad.

Congress, however, was not minded to create a low-mintage commemorative, as there had been several issues which had been struck in small numbers only to sell at high prices, and the bill was amended to provide for 25,000 half dollars.

There were a large number of commemorative coin bills in Congress in 1936, and the dealer feared that President Franklin D. Roosevelt would start vetoing them.

The pieces were "in commemoration of the one-hundredth anniversary of the founding of the city of Elgin, Illinois, and the erection of the heroic Pioneer Memorial"—Rovelstad's statue.

[9] Hoffecker suggested that Rovelstad seek to have the mintage divided among the three mints, but conceded that unless Congress had erred in the enacted language, this gambit was not likely to succeed.

The designs arrived on July 15, 1936, and were approved two days later, with the request that the head of the pioneer on the obverse, in three-quarter view (facing forward and to one side) as submitted by Rovelstad, be in profile instead.

Lawrie also stated that some of the lettering should be strengthened, but if the Mint director, Nellie Tayloe Ross, was not disturbed by these things, the coin should go forward.

The child is the second baby to be implied, but not fully seen, on a US coin–one is sketched with the mother inside the Conestoga wagon on the Oregon Trail Memorial half dollar, first struck in 1926.

Rovelstad placed, both on the medal and on the base for the statue, the words, "To the men who have blazed the trails, who have conquered the soil, and who have built an empire in the land of the Illini.

He noted that the technique of spacing out the letters of the word "Pioneer" above the head presages that used by later Chief Engraver Gilroy Roberts on the obverse of the Kennedy half dollar.

[19] The Philadelphia Mint shipped 24,990 coins (the authorized mintage less the first ten pieces, which Rovelstad had taken) to Hoffecker on October 7, 1936; they were received in El Paso four days later.

Other dealers were uninterested in large purchases as the direct sale to collectors meant that few who wanted and could afford the Elgin coin lacked it.

Through the half century that followed, he progressed on the statues, and by the time of his death in 1990, he had completed the group in plaster of Paris, that still needed to be bronzed before display.

Yeoman's A Guide Book of United States Coins, the Elgin Centennial half dollar lists at $250 in Almost Uncirculated (AU-50) condition, rising to $550 in near-pristine MS-66.

[29] According to numismatic historian Q. David Bowers, "nothing untoward was associated with the distribution of the Elgin Centennial half dollars, and certainly at the Illinois end of the deal sculptor Trygve A. Rovelstad's intentions and ethics were of the highest order.