New Miss Liberty $100 gold coin arrives today

Got a spare $1,640?

The Mint hopes so.

It has a goal of extracting $164 million from the collector coin field.

Can it do so?

We will find out starting at noon Eastern Daylight Time today when the American Liberty 225th Anniversary one-ounce gold coin goes on sale.

It features the allegorical figure of Miss Liberty as an African-American woman on obverse and an eagle in flight on the reverse.

It has a face value of $100.

There is no order limit.

One person could order the entire supply. But only a Bill Gates or Warren Buffett are likely to have such sums available on a whim.

The press release offers an insight as to how Mint officials think.

It is not like coin collectors.

In fact, it defies logic.

By allowing the theoretical prospect of one buyer acquiring the entire 100,000 coin supply, the Mint says this:

“To maximize availability of this historic coin to the public, the Mint is not imposing a household order limit.”

Anyone wondering why there were no order limits on the Congratulations Set on Tuesday will be happy to know that this is how the Mint thinks it is maximizing availability.

That’s why groups of 10 Congratulations Sets were being offered on eBay less than 24 hours after the two-minute sellout for double issue price.

The Mint is maximizing the availability of the set to the public.

However, 100,000 gold coins that cost $1,640 each are much less likely to sell out.

To buy the entire Congratulations Set issue required only $4,121,250.

The $164 million figure is almost 40 times that sum.

It is not likely to be reached.

With $164 million you could have purchased every single one of the three Centennial gold coins that have been sold to this point and still have around $40 million left.

The Liberty design for this year is brand new and does not have the same connection to the collector sense of nostalgia that the familiar Mercury dime, Standing Liberty quarter and Walking Liberty half dollar designs have.

These three 2016 designs motivated collectors to dig deeply into their pockets.

How deep will collectors dig for the 2017 American Liberty?

Even if they spend more money on this coin than they did on the most expensive of the Centennial coins, sales cannot reach 40,000.

I will give the issue the benefit of the doubt and say 40,000 pieces tops.

What do you think?

Buzz blogger Dave Harper has twice won the Numismatic Literary Guild Award for Best Blog and is editor of the weekly newspaper "Numismatic News."

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