Lincoln dollar nears sellout

Sales of the Lincoln commemorative silver dollar by the U.S. Mint are rolling along. More and more it looks like a sellout in the making, perhaps as early as next week.

Anybody who wants the coin should get cracking.

There are 450,000 coins available to be sold individually and another 50,000 will be offered later this year in a special set.

As of the most recent Mint statistics in my possession the Mint needs to sell just 26,549 more coins to take care of the 450,000-coin group.

So far, proofs are the more popular with collectors. Some 296,488 have been sold. For the uncirculated version, the sales total so far is 126,963.

If the commemorative does indeed sell out, is this a signal of a renaissance in demand for the modern commemorative series as a whole, or is it simply a broken clock being right twice a day where after many years the Congress was bound to pick a theme that resonates with collectors?

We will know more starting March 26 when the Braille silver dollars go on sale.

Interestingly, the Mint offers a Braille dollar option with a special capsule that can be easily opened to allow buyers to touch the readable Braille on the reverse.

This is an interesting idea, but those buyers who do indeed open the holder will find that they are reducing the collectible value of the coin if they touch it.

Perhaps this is a series where a cheap bronze duplicate medal would have made sense for those buyers who might have the urge to finger their coins.