Coins

The 2007 First Spouse 24K Gold Coin Program (Companion to the Presidential $1 Dollar Coin Program)

/ Adam Nash / 6 Comments

Some new detail is now available on the US Mint website about the companion program to the new Presidential $1 Dollar Coin Program launching in 2007.

In case you missed it, I’ve written a couple of posts about the program, and they have both been fairly popular over time:

Some interesting detail about the program:

The United States is honoring our Nation’s First Spouses by issuing one-half ounce $10 gold coins featuring their images, in the order that they served as first spouse, beginning in 2007 with Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, (Thomas Jefferson’s Liberty) and Dolley Madison. The obverse of these coins will feature portraits of the Nation’s First Spouses, their names, the dates and order of their term as first spouse, as well as the year of minting or issuance, “In God We Trust” and “Liberty.” The United States Mint will mint and issue First Spouse Gold Coins on the same schedule as the Presidential $1 Coins issued honoring the Presidents. Each coin will have a unique reverse design featuring an image emblematic of that spouse’s life and work, as well as “The United States of America,” “E Pluribus Unum,” “$10,” “1/2 oz.” and “.9999 Fine Gold.”

When a President served without a First Spouse, such as Thomas Jefferson, a gold coin will be issued bearing an obverse image emblematic of Liberty as depicted on a circulating coin of that era, and bearing a reverse image emblematic of themes of that President.

The United States Mint will also produce and make available to the public bronze medal duplicates of the First Spouse Gold Coins.

A few key points stand out to me here, as a collector:

  1. These coins will be expensive. These look like they will be the second series of coins in US history to be a full 24K gold (99.99% pure). The first, of course, was the new 2006 American Buffalo, and at one ounce the proof version of this coin sold for $800. Given that the price of gold is not likely to decrease much in the near term, it’s likely that each of these coins will retail at between $400-$500 in proof form, making this a $2,000-a-year habit for the collector. Compare this to the US State Quarter program, where a 90% silver version of each year’s coins would only cost you $20-$40, depending on whether you bought the quarters alone, or the full year silver proof set.
  2. No detail on bundled sets, yet. It stands to reason that the US Mint will produce some form of collectible proof set of the matching gold coin and presidential dollar… but what form will be the favorite? Would you rather have a single set of all the coins for the year? Or each President, paired with their first spouse? Does it really make sense to have a manganese-brass coin for the President, and 24K solid gold for the first spouse? I’m a little afraid the US Mint is going to be over-eager here, and produce too many versions of these coins to be anything but frustrating to collectors.
  3. Trivial Pursuit, First Spouse Edition. Martha Washington, most people know. There will definitely be some fun in identifying which Presidents actually served without spouses, or which Presidents served with two. (You can find the answers to these questions already in the US Mint schedule, available on their site.) I will admit, when I think of Dolley Madison, I think of baked goods, not gold coin #4. Is anyone, beyond speculators, really going to jump at purchasing these coins?

As a collector, I guess this comes down to one question: will there be enough demand for these coins to generate a good long term return. Unlike the dollars, these will not be in general circulation. Will they be treated like bullion coins (fantastic long term returns to collectors) or like special-edition commeratives, which tend not to appreciate over time?

When I first heard about the program, I thought that it was too expensive, but there might be real long term demand for “popular” spouses – Martha Washington, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jacquiline Kennedy… Now, I’m not so sure.

Recently, I’ve been shocked by the sky-rocketing price for the new, uncirculated silver eagle from the US Mint. As a new issue in 2006, this was not a proof coin, just a new, uncirculated silver eagle in a nice case for $17 from the US Mint. The price on eBay is now over $50, largely because it turns out that this was the only way to get the “W” mint-mark coin, and relatively few people acquired it. Right now, this version is worth almost double what the much prettier, proof-version of the silver eagle is worth.

Will the pattern be the same for these coins? Will Dolley Madison end up selling poorly in 2007, resulting in a sky-rocketing price in 2015 when everyone realizes they need Dolly Madison to complete the set? Will anyone be trying to complete this set, at an aggregate cost of over $16,000 at today’s prices?

If you are a coin collector out there, I’d love to hear from you.

Update (6/19/2007): I’ve just posted a new article on the launch of the coins, today, at the US Mint website. $429.95 for the proof coin, $410.95 for the uncirculated coin. Shipping will start on July 4th. Total mintage: 40,000 coin limit per first spouse, regardless of type of coin.

Update (6/21/2007):  The first spouse coins sold out in approximately 2 hours!  Unbelievable.  Check out this post for more information, and a link to current prices on eBay.

New eBay Guide: US Presidential $1 Dollar Coin Program

/ Adam Nash

I decided to take some of the information I’ve gathered on the new US Presidential $1 Dollar Coin Program that launches in 2007 and share it with the eBay community.

Collecting the New Presidential $1 Dollar Program Coins

Please take the time to check it out, if you are interested, and if you are an eBay member, vote for the guide by answering “Yes” to the question on whether it was helpful or not. The most helpful guides rise to the top on various pages at eBay, so the more you vote for it, the more people who will get a chance to read it. (Please note: you can only vote if you are an eBay member)

I’m still very excited for this program, despite it being a rather transparent attempt for the US Mint to get more money out of me. It looks like it is going to work.

As a side note, not many people realize that the same bill in 2005 that authorized the new Presidential dollar coins also authorized the new American Buffalo gold bullion coin, the first 24K, 0.9999 fine quality gold coin ever produced by the US. The same bill also authorized the new versions of the Lincon cent that will debut in 2009 to celebrate 100 years of having Abraham Lincoln on the penny.

2009 will feature the last year of the State Quarter program, the third year of the Presidential dollar coin program, and four new penny designs. That is going to be quite a year for proof sets!

Other posts I’ve had recently on similar topics:

US Mint Unveils the 2007 Presidential Dollar Coins

/ Adam Nash / 10 Comments

I have been pleasantly surprised by the popularity of my first post on this topic:

Coming Soon: The Presidential $1 Dollar Coin Program

Well, the day has arrived. It’s November 20th, and the US Mint has officially taken the wraps off the first four Presidential Dollar coins, the ones that will be issued in 2007.

The first four coins represent the the first four Presidents of the United States. The US Mint is really going out of their way to make this an educational program. They have a page set up for every design, with historical facts about each president:

  1. George Washington
  2. John Adams
  3. Thomas Jefferson
  4. James Madison

They have a nice Flash demo up that highlights the new features of coin. Basically, it will be the same size and color as the Sacagawea dollar, but they have expanded the space for the portraits by moving some of the text to the edge of the coin.

The reverse of the coin features the Statue of Liberty, as a sly nod to previous efforts to feature prominant women from US History on the dollar coins.

This coin is a great idea, as it will definitely bring in revenue to the US Mint from collectors, and will spark a whole decade of fun, historical exercise with children.

The one mistake this program is making is not tying it to the removal of the $1 Bill. As Canada has shown recently, eliminating the $1 bill does not have to be traumatic. However, it is necessary if you want to force adoption of the new coin by both consumers and by retailers.

I’m excited about this program, although I’m a little disappointed to hear that they will not be making a precious metal version of the dollar coins. Gold & silver are better base metals for collectibles, since they also have intrinsic value. I would love to see them make a special edition gold version of each coin for collectors.

Unfortunately, they have decided to only make special edition gold coins of the First Ladies for each President… and I’m not sure I’m willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a group of people with dubious historical significance… OK, I might pony up for Jacqueline Kennedy coin… 🙂

Here is the release schedule for all the coins, in case you haven’t seen it. They have only plotted out until early 2016 (Richard Nixon), as I think that’s the point where they start running into live Presidents. We have quite a few living ex-Presidents now (Ford, Carter, Bush, Clinton), so they won’t get coins unless something unfortunately happens before 2016.

When is a Penny worth two cents?

/ Adam Nash / 2 Comments

When you factor in current metal prices, the US Mint is in a bit of a pickle.

I caught this article today on Seeking Alpha, which discusses a lot of topics, ranging from the new US Mint commercials, to the cost of making the penny and the nickel.

Who’s Minding The Mint

According to this report from July 2006, the US penny is made up of 97.5% Zinc, and 2.5% Copper. As of July metal prices, it cost the US approximately 1.4 cents to mint a penny. Given the recent rise in metal prices since then, it may be closer to two cents now.

According to this link from the US Mint, they produced 7.348 Billion pennies in 2006.  If they mint the same in 2007, that means we’ll lose approximately $73.5 Million in production costs of pennies alone.
Everyone picks on the penny, but I thought this tidbit about the nickel was interesting also, since it looks like it is in the same boat:

And speaking of nickels, composed of 75 percent nickel and 25 percent copper, this coin has its own budget problems. When the calculation was done in July with the price of nickel at $13 a pound, the value of the metal content alone came out to almost seven cents.

If other production costs and the current metal price are factored in, it’s closer to a dime.

I’m a little surprised that there hasn’t been some form of arbitrage to buy pennies in bulk and sell them for scrap metal. Maybe the scrap prices are still too low to make it worthwhile.

Already, with Platinum and Gold prices rising, you’ve seen a breakout of new metals in relatively fancy jewelery (like wedding bands) – Titanium, and in some cases, Tungsten Carbide! I wonder if we’ll need to do a metal rotation in our currency to “less expensive” metals.

It seems that inevitably the smaller coins will eventually vanish – not due to inflation, but due to the growing use of digital forms of payment (credit/debit cards, key fobs, cell phones).

In the meantime, though, when someone gives you a few pennies and a nickel for change, you can feel smug about getting double your money’s worth in metal.

Coming Soon: The Presidential $1 Dollar Coin Program

/ Adam Nash / 21 Comments

So, if it wasn’t clear from my previous post and eBay Guide on the US State Quarters Program, I like to collect coins. As a result, I tend to follow bulletins from the US Mint with a little more interest than average.

Looks like November 20 is the day that the US Mint will take the wraps off the designs of the first four Presidential dollar coins.

For those of you unfamiliar with the program, the basic idea is that the US Government will be producing special versions of the $1 coin, one for each President of the United States. Four coins will be produced every year, finishing out the program in 2017 or so. The reason the ending is vague is because they will not produce a coin for any living President, so the question is whether or not any currently living (or upcoming) Presidents make it to 2016.

You can read a really nice writeup of the program here on Wikipedia.

This program was put into place by the Predential $1 Coin Act of 2005, which also brought us the first 24K US Bullion Gold coin, the American Buffalo.

The US Mint is starting to think more like a business, and given the incredible success of the 50 State Quarter Program, it was inevitable that someone would do the math on how much the government makes printing money that people like to collect instead of spend.

Although the US Mint runs a risk of “collector fatigue” if they play this card too much, I think this program will be a lot of fun for several reasons:

  1. A dollar is worth collecting. American coins haven’t really kept up with inflation. When a candy bar at the supermarket is $0.99, even small kids know that pennies may not get you very far. A dollar is still substantial, and it should attract some interest from kids who might tie a pile of dollar coins to some significant savings.
  2. A reason to learn history. Learning the 50 States is fun. Learning about the US Presidents will have additional depth because each one represents a length of time in US history.
  3. Gotta have them all! The most valuable proof set in a long time has been the 1999 Silver Proof Set – the first to offer the state quarters, before people realized how popular this program would be. Minting four new coins a year ensures a variety of collectible sets, and rewards for people who have the patience to collect through the entire program. Nothing gets collector blood pumping than the idea that there is an entire set of variations to collect.

I think the US Mint is getting a little greedy by printing up “companion gold coins” of each first lady. I’m not sure most people even know most of the first ladies through history, let alone want to pay for them in solid gold form.

Still, you know I’ll have my orders in place for these coins. I’ll likely be buying some for myself, and some to sell on eBay to help fund my collection.

Go check out the US Mint on November 20th for the new designs. The first year will be:

  1. George Washington
  2. John Adams
  3. Thomas Jefferson
  4. James Madison

It’s going to be exciting… in a coin collecting sort-of way.

Update (11/20/2006): The day has come… please see my new post on the unveiling of the first four designs at the US Mint:

US Mint Unveils the 2007 Presidential Dollar Coins

Update (12/27/2006): I’ve posted additional details about the new First Spouse coin program

The 2007 First Spouse 24K Gold Coin Program

Update (02/15/2007): The dollars are here! Here is my first day coverage

New Insights from the Launch of the Presidential $1 Dollar Coin

Update (5/17/2007):  The John Adams dollar coins have been released! 

The John Adams Presidential $1 Dollar Coin is Available

My First eBay Guide: US 50 State Quarter Program

/ Adam Nash / 1 Comment

Instead of writing a blog post on this topic, I decided to use the new eBay Reviews & Guides feature to write a new “eBay Guide” on the topic of the US State Quarter Program:

Collecting State Quarters: Which Will Gain in Value?

Read it and let me know what you think. If you like it, and you are an eBay member, please vote for the guide as useful.

The fundamental theory is that by looking at the total mintage of a state quarter, and comparing it to the population of the state, you can partially predict where supply & demand will be out of balance in the future. This is because demand is skewed by the population of a state, but the US Treasury mints quarters purely based on macroeconomic conditions at the time.

I continue to be a fairly avid coin collector, and I thought it would be nice to try and “give back” to the eBay coin community by putting together a guide. I’m interested to see what feedback I get from posting in that forum.