Recent U.S. Gold Commemoratives – the Low Mintages
Low-mintage U.S. gold commemorative coins from recent years are flying under the radar—but savvy collectors are taking notice. Could these overlooked issues be tomorrow’s treasures?
The United States Mint has created an amazing commemorative coinage program in the years since a humble start with the now-famous 1982 Washington half dollar. The themes have been varied, and the designs are generally quite attractive. But the cynical collectors among us have probably claimed more than once that Congress, in its infinite desire to commemorate what they want, has gotten the Mint to produce far more designs and far more commems than the collector community can absorb and probably more than the general public could even want. However, even the cynics have to admit that there are some neat possibilities in this continuously growing series. This entire run, especially the run of silver and gold pieces, may be far beyond the mainstream for most of us. But let’s focus on just a couple of the more recent gold pieces and see if it might be time to bring these out of whatever backwater eddies in which they reside. There could be some potential here.
The 2019 American Legion $5 gold piece
We’ll take a look first at the American Legion Centennial Anniversary commemorative, focusing only on the half-eagle $5 gold piece that was part of a trio. The design is one of the more powerful ones in the entire series of modern commemorative coins the Mint has pounded out, with its bold, soaring eagle. However, even the juxtaposed V and Eiffel Tower make for an impressive image. There are two options for anyone interested in this gold piece: an uncirculated version, with only 3,090 minted, and its proof sibling, with 10,920 to its total.
Right away, we’ll admit that a gold piece like either of these, containing 0.2418 ounces of the precious metal, will not qualify as particularly cheap. After all, gold has punched through the $3,000 per ounce level of late. But the standard price lists, including those we read in Numismatic News, don’t list these pieces as all that much higher than what can be called the spot price of gold. If we stop and do a bit of “comparison shopping,” as it were, we can see just how good these prices can be.
What we mean by comparison is to look at a well-known and well-loved $5 half eagle, the 1986 Statue of Liberty Centennial comment. It has the same amount of gold in it as our Legion piece, 0.2418 ounces. It has mintages of 95,248 as an uncirculated coin and 404,013 as a proof. And very importantly, it rings in with prices in MS-65 and PF-65 that are about the same as the Legion piece. Let’s pause for a moment and let the relative rarity of the Legion piece sink in.
Now, even if we are the type of collector who never wants to spend more than $100 on any coin we purchase, we’ve just seen that this quite modern gold piece is incredibly undervalued. The gold in these pieces alone is worth about $775 when gold trades at $3,200 per ounce. It might be worth saving up for a purchase.
The 2020 Basketball Hall of Fame $5
The next modern gold $5 piece we want to look at is properly called the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame 60th Anniversary piece. Most collectors shorten that mouthful to the Basketball commem. This design has exerted a pull on some of us in the collecting audience simply because the images are rather abstract. That’s not a detraction; the entire look is a good one.
The tallies for the uncirculated and proof pieces here are on par with the American Legion pieces, meaning 3,261 for the unc version and 8,070 for the proof. But the prices are not really any higher than those for the Legion $5 half eagle. It seems then that we have at least two pieces hiding in plain sight and managing to keep pretty well aligned with the price of the precious metal.
The 2021 National Law Enforcement Memorial and Museum
This third example we’re going to look at probably qualifies as having the most traditional or normal design – and we’ll leave a definition of normal to anyone who wants to tackle it. But the image on the obverse, the two busts of law enforcement officers, is one that most folks would say has a traditional look and feel to it.
Totals for the uncirculated and proof versions of this $5 piece are even lower than the other two we’ve just seen. Only 1,878 of the uncirculated pieces were produced, and 5,799 were proofs. Yet, for the third time, this duo seems to be connected to price tags that are pretty much aligned with the earlier two.
Overall, the only reason this trio of modern half-eagles appears to be so undervalued is that all are under-collected. But that can indeed be a very good thing for us.
Are there more of these hidden $5 commemoratives?
The question isn’t quite rhetorical, although we could confine ourselves to thinking about where we might go next, assuming we had the funds to snag all three of these gold pieces. The price of gold on the world markets right now is the perhaps obvious stumbling block in assembling any collection of U.S. gold pieces, be they commemorative or not. But the mintage figures we just quoted are low enough to be eye-opening and to make even the most frugal of us consider trying to get one or more of this three-piece “set.” Modern, commemorative United States gold commems might seem to be entirely beyond the mainstream right now, but they certainly do not have to be.
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