Upcoming U.S. Numismatic Market Opportunities

[VDB Coins]

A couple of bills that may get approved in Congress direct the U.S. Mint to issue "replicas" of the Panama-Pacific coinage of 1915, plus a silver dollar that may resemble the Roosevelt medal that was presented to every U.S. worker that had two years' continuous service in the Panama Canal. The Panama Canal had a fascinating history, another project that was completed only at the insistence of President Theodore Roosevelt. The completed Panama Canal turned America into a world superpower, the most expensive federal project to date in U.S. history, and the United States created a new nation of Panama (it was a province of Colombia until 1903) in order to gain access to the Panama Canal Zone.

If the Mint makes a gold coin in octagonal form that actually resembles the full-size 1915-S Pan-Pac octagonal/round coins, they would have to be quite expensive and also incredibly popular for those few collectors who could afford them. Your thoughts?

Best Regards, 

George

[coinsarefun]

Like you said if they make it that size not many people will afford them but it will be beautiful and probably as collectable if not more so than the UHR.

I wonder what the dollar amount would be on something like that

[VDB Coins]

The original Pan-Pac fifties were net 2.4+ ounces fine gold. Say $1700/ounce gold (of course who knows that gold will be in two years?) and a Mint markup of 40%, that would be $4,080 melt plus 40% = $5,712 each, assuming they are full-size. But that is a really big if, both from marketing and technical perspectives. The originals were struck on medal presses that were shipped to San Francisco specifically for the event, if I remember right. When the Mint struck the Ultra High Reliefs in 2009 I personally found them a huge disappointment, that even 100 hundred years later they couldn't strike a full-size Ultra. A dealer friend of mine called them this and it has always stuck with me, "Saint-Gaudens on a button."

Best Regards, 

George