Sampling Mint Products

Do you purchase coins or medals from the U.S. Mint? Looking back, I realize that my purchases from the Mint began early in my coin collecting life. My father and I ordered a couple of proof sets in 1955. The sets we received consisted of five coins each, with each coin in its own small plastic bag, with the five bags stapled together at the top. Each set came in a small cardboard box. Later in 1955, the sets were placed in what was called a “flat pack.”

Before being placed in flat packs, the coins often toned either beautifully or badly depending on how you feel about toning on coins. I’m sure we bought more proof sets after 1955, but I don’t remember which ones or when we stopped purchasing them.

My initial thought about my history of buying coins directly from the Mint was that such purchases were few and far between. In fact, at first, I remembered only one other such purchase, the 2009 Ultra High Relief double eagle. I paid $1,194 for it, and it now resides in a PCGS slab with a grade of MS70. If you’ve ever seen one of these, it won’t surprise you to learn that I love it!

As I continued to search my memory for Mint purchases, I remembered that I bought annual proof sets to give to my children every Christmas. Although I had to buy some of these in the secondary market, I ordered most of the sets from the Mint. I continued this practice until my children were 21.

The Mint also caught my attention with the First Spouse $10 gold series. In particular, I thought it would be interesting to acquire a set of the four representations of Liberty that circulated when four presidents served their terms without a spouse. Of the eight such pieces, one circulation strike coin and one proof version, I bought four from the Mint. The others I bought on eBay.

My most recent Mint purchases were a Kennedy dollar and Jackie Kennedy medal set and two Barack Obama medals, one for his first term and another for his second term. I bought these as surprise gifts for my wife.

As I put together this list of Mint purchases, I began to wonder what the Mint is currently offering. Would they have anything of interest to me today? With these thoughts in mind, I decided to take an in-depth look at the Mint’s offerings. Here’s a sample of what I found. If you’ve not visited the Mint’s website recently, be prepared to be impressed. In my case, I might even say that I was “blown away!”

When you first arrive at usmint.gov, you’ll find seven pull-down menus under the “Shop” heading. Although there are others that might better capture your attention, the ones I examined were Coins, Medals, Collections, and Gift Ideas. If you’re a paper money collector, you might choose Paper Currency, and if you find that you’re particularly interested in some of the Mint’s coinage programs, then Subscriptions might be worth a look. I’ll have more to say about Subscriptions later. The remaining pull-down menu is for Engraved Prints, which you can check out while you’re there.

Unfortunately, once I started actually looking at some of the options, I found that many of the great-looking coins that interested me were either “Not Available,” “Sold Out,” or “Coming Soon.” As just one example of this, the American Liberty one-ounce gold coin that recently won a Coin of the Year award is Not Available. You can click on “Remind Me,” provide your email address and/or your phone number, and the Mint will let you know when/if the item comes back into stock.

The coin itself features an American mustang that has just bucked off its saddle, which is supposed to represent the overthrow of British rule by the American Revolution. The reverse is dominated by a giant eagle head. If you like the design, which I do, but don’t feel like paying $2,815 for a one-ounce gold coin, assuming it comes back into stock at the same price, the Mint has another option. It’s a one-ounce silver medal that’s priced at “just” $82. The availability is limited, of course, so you need to send your order ASAP.

Actually, the first pull-down menu under the Coins heading is for the Mint’s Coin Programs. I counted 10 of these, including America the Beautiful Quarters, American Buffalo coins, American Eagle coins, American Women Quarters, and Native American coins.

The next-to-last program listed is the Morgan and Peace Silver Dollars program. I understood the rationale for reissuing both the Morgan and the Peace dollar in 2021 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the end of the Morgan dollar series and the beginning of Peace dollars. No coins in this series were issued in 2022 because the Mint was unable to obtain sufficient planchets for the coins to be minted.

I do question the rationale for continuing the Morgan dollar past 2021, however, as there were no 1922 and beyond Morgan dollars. It makes sense to continue the Peace dollar part of the program, as Peace dollars continued to be minted sporadically through 1935. Of course, the 2021 dollars were a huge hit, which is undoubtedly the main reason for continuing the program.

I checked out the American Women Quarters program and found the array of options bewildering. Coming soon will be two-roll and three-roll sets of 2023’s first American Women’s quarter honoring Bessie Coleman. According to the site, “Bessie Coleman was a pilot, advocate, and pioneer who flew to great heights as the first African American and first Native American woman pilot and first African American to earn an international pilot’s license.”

The two-roll sets sell for $40 and consist of a roll of coins from the Philadelphia Mint and a roll from the Denver Mint. Three-roll sets are priced at $60 and consist of rolls from Philadelphia, Denver, and San Francisco. In addition to the roll sets, there are also two 100-coin bags, one of P-Mint coins and one of D-Mint coins. The bags sell for $45 each.

In addition, there are various 2022 proof set options, some of which have limited availability. There’s one consisting of silver versions (99.9 percent silver) of the American Women quarters, which sells for $80. There’s another option, called the Silver Proof Set, which combines the five silver American Women quarters with a five-coin proof set (1c, 5c, 10c, 50c, $1), of which the dime and half dollar are 99.9 percent silver. The price on this option is $130.

Finally, there’s the Limited Edition Silver Proof Set, which consists of the five silver American Women quarters, a silver Roosevelt dime, and a silver Kennedy half dollar. The set also includes a one-ounce silver American Eagle. This “must have” set will set you back $220!

In addition to the roll and proof set options, there is an ornaments option. There are five of these for 2022, one each for the five American women (Anna May Wong, Wilma Mankiller, Maya Angelou, Nina Otero-Warren, and Dr. Sally Ride) chosen for the first year of the program.

According to the Mint, the ornaments are “. . . hand-crafted in solid brass with a rhodium finish.” These ornaments enclose an uncirculated Philadelphia-mint quarter whose reverse highlights the career and accomplishments of the honoree. Each of the ornaments sells for $35.

In case you’re thinking that surely that must be the end of the offerings in the Mint’s program to honor American women, it’s not. There are also bronze medals that are replicas of Congressional Gold Medals awarded to honor a recipient’s contributions to our nation.

For example, there’s a bronze medal for Rosa Parks. According to the site, “The obverse features her portrait with ‘ROSA PARKS’ inscribed along the top and ‘MOTHER OF THE MODERN DAY CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT’ centered along the bottom and sides. The reverse features the inscription ‘QUIET STRENGTH’ centered along the top, framed by a swag of oak leaves on the left and right sides and the inscriptions ‘PRIDE, DIGNITY, COURAGE’ and ‘BY ACT OF CONGRESS 1999’ centered across the bottom.” Depending on size, the medals cost either $20 (1.5 inch) or $160 (3 inch).

Do you see now why I called the array of options “bewildering?” And with all that I told you about I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that I had missed some options.

In addition to the Coin Programs under the Coins heading, there are Coin Sets and Precious Metal Coins. As you can see, there’s a lot of duplication here. The coin sets include proof sets that are listed under the various coin programs. Some of the sets have limited availability and a few are not available at all.

Under Coin Sets, there’s something called Bundle Sets. One of these is a set of four medals depicting Icons of the Civil Rights Movement: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King, Rosa Parks, Dorothy Height, and the Little Rock Nine. The medals are the 1.5-inch versions noted above as costing $20 each. Obviously, you would save a little (not a bundle) by purchasing this Bundle Set rather than buying each of the medals individually.

The Mint offers four Special Occasion Sets: 2023 Congratulations Set (coming soon), Happy Birthday Currency Note 2020 (sold out), Happy Birthday Coin Set 2021 (sold out), and Congratulations Set 2022 (not available). Maybe it would be better to describe these as sets the Mint has offered in the past and may offer in the future!

I was interested to see what I would find under the heading of Gift Ideas. Although there are gifts for coin collectors, as you would expect, there are also gifts for military enthusiasts, dads, grandparents, history buffs, kids, and even for newborns. Without looking at them, I would guess that the gifts for newborns are more for their parents than for the newborns themselves.

Indeed, this turned out to be correct. Pictured are three such gifts, Congratulation Sets from either 2023 (coming soon) or 2022 (not available) and gift certificates with five denominations between $25 and $200. The Congratulation Sets (when available) consist of a 1-ounce Silver Eagle in a special presentation folder. The folder has space inside for the gift giver to write a personal message to the recipient.

Under Gifts for Kids, there’s a New Frontier Bronze Medal that honors the Apollo 11 astronauts (Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, Edwin E. A”Buzz” Aldrin) and Friendship 7 astronaut John Glenn and commemorates their two historic missions. Prices for the medals are either $20 (1.5 inch) or $160 (3 inch).

In addition to the medals, there are two sets for kids. One is the 2019 Youth Coin and Currency Set, which contains five proof quarters and a $2 bill. The price is $29.95.

The other set looks like something that kids might find both fun and interesting. It contains six coins, three uncirculated and three proof, a cent blank, and a magnifying glass that can be used to examine the four removable coins. The price for the set is a modest $19.95.

The last heading under the Shopping category is Collections. Pull this heading down, and you’ll find that the Mint offers coin and medal collections for the military, for African Americans, for Native Americans, and so on. There’s even a collection of sports coins and medals. Because I’m writing this on Super Bowl Sunday, I decided to check out this offering.

Among others, there are bronze medals for famous golfers Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer. The prices are either $20 or $160 depending on size (1.5 inch or 3 inch). Apparently, there’s only the 1.5 inch medal available for Jackie Robinson, who excelled as a baseball player and is also famous for having been the first African American to break the “color barrier” in professional baseball.

There’s also a medal for Steve Gleason, a New Orleans Saints football player who played seven seasons before being diagnosed with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, aka Lou Gehrig’s disease). After his diagnosis, Gleason created a foundation to help bring greater awareness of the disease to the public.

When I pulled down the Subscriptions menu, I found that you can subscribe to any or all of 11 different issues, such as the American Women Quarters Program, American Eagle Coins, Native American $1 Coins, and Kennedy Half Dollars. According to the Mint, subscriptions offer two advantages: “[They] come with free shipping and are the only way to automatically receive all future releases of your favorite products.”

Earlier, I talked about the unavailability of the American Liberty one-ounce gold coin recently chosen Coin-of-the-Year. This is only one of many items I found under the heading “Precious Metal Coins.” Unfortunately, of the 11 coins or sets under the Gold heading, only 3 were actually available: 2022 uncirculated one-ounce American Eagle ($2,720), 2017 one-ounce American Liberty ($2,815), and 2018 tenth-ounce proof American Liberty ($345).

Unavailability was also the case for three of the four coins listed under the Palladium heading. The only coin having limited availability was the 2022 American Eagle one-ounce Reverse Proof coin offered at $2,550. This bullion coin bears the obverse design from the Mercury dime.

The Mint’s platinum proof coins are particularly interesting, as each new issue has a different obverse design. The one-ounce coin that is coming soon has a design showing a cluster of acorns in an oak tree. According to the website, “This series uses the lifecycle of the oak tree from seedling to a mighty oak as a metaphor for our country’s growth as a Nation that values freedom. Liberty grows to a thing of strength and beauty from a seed—our Bill of Rights. Each of the freedoms enumerated in the First Amendment contributes to the growth and development of the Nation.” The price is TBD (to be determined). Previous issues still available are priced at $1,545.

The Mint’s silver bullion issues include the silver American Eagle, which sports the familiar Walking Liberty design on its obverse. When the 2023 one-ounce proofs are available, they’ll be priced at $80 apiece.

I hope that my sampling of the Mint’s website has given you some of the flavor of its wares. As you can see, these offerings are plentiful and varied, although often not available. If you haven’t visited usmint.gov lately, check it out. I think you’ll be glad you did.