Ginger Rapsus’s article “Key year for coin collectors is 1893” in Numismatic News (posted November 17, 2018) states that among the many souvenirs produced for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, “perhaps the best known of the souvenirs are two of the first classic commemorative coins.”
About the Columbian half dollar, Rapsus writes that “a good number of these coins did not sell and eventually were melted or entered circulation, sometimes turning up in change or in a bank roll. I know of two collectors who found these half dollars searching bank rolls.”
The other commemorative coin was the Isabella quarter, which Rapsus notes was “the first United States coin depicting a real woman and not an allegorical figure.” A rare (one of only 100 minted) proof of the 1893 Isabella quarter sold for $9,400 in 2014.
This rare proof of the Isabella quarter, an 1893 World’s Fair commemorative coin, sold for $9,400 at Stack’s Bowers Galleries in 2014.