2019 Apollo 11 Commems - Released January 24th, 2019

The Mint own us!

Were the mintages and coin sizes on the baseball comm similar to what the apollo will be?

Now, nearly 5 years after issue, you can usually get proof half eagles for around 10-15% less than the issue price of $436.90, with the exception of TPG graded PR70 coins, which can typically be purchased for 10-15% over issue price.

The spot price of Au back in Mar 2014 was around $1,340 vs the current spot price of around $1,295. So, maybe half of the decrease in price is due to the decreased Au spot price, but IMHO the rest is due to lower demand.


The mintages shown in this post for the Ag $1 aren't correct. From 2017 Mega Red, the mintages for the Ag $1 were: 131,909 UNC, 268,076 PRF and total of 399,985. (Also, the website that Alpha referenced indicates the mintages as 131,924 and 268,076. Looks like Alpha somehow dropped the 2 from the 268,076 number ). The Ag $1 was also a sold out issue, but it didn't happen the first day as was the case for the half eagles. It took around 2 weeks for the Ag $1s to sell out.

With all of the speculation about whether or not the Apollo half eagles and silver dollars will achieve sold out status, I was interested in going back and looking at all of the modern commemorative half eagle and silver dollars to see which others (if any) also achieved a sold out status

I defined sold out as meaning at least 99% of the authorized mintage was in fact minted. Using this as the criteria, there have been a few "sold out" modern commemoratives.

Just a couple of half eagles achieved sold out status.

The 1986 Statue of Liberty Half Eagle was sold out. It was the first ever commemorative half eagle. That, along with the general fanfare over the restoration of the statue, made it a very popular coin. With an authorized mintage of 500,000 and its sold out status, it has the 2nd highest actual mintage of any commemorative half eagle (only the 1987 Constitution commemorative is higher).

The only other commemorative half eagle to achieve sold out status was the 2014 Baseball HOF coin. The Baseball HOF had an authorized mintage of 50,000. The lowest authorized mintage up to that time (and since, although the 2017 Boys Town, 2018 BCA, this year's Apollo and American Legion coins and next year's Basketball coin also have authorized mintages of 50,000). Even though the authorized mintage for the Baseball HOF half eagles was low, in terms of actual mintage, these coins are pretty much in the middle of the pack with 21 out of 34 other UNC $5 and 14 out of 34 PRF $5 coins having lower actual mintages. The 2017 Boys Town half eagles with 2,947 UNC and 7,347 PRF coins are the low mintage half eagle coins.

There are 6 modern commemorative silver dollars that achieved sold out status. The latest one was, again, the 2014 Baseball HOF coin. The others were the 2010 Boy Scouts commemorative, the 2009 Lincoln commemorative, the 2001 Buffalo commemorative, the 1993 Jefferson commemorative and the 1992 White House commemorative. With authorized mintages ranging from 350,000 to 600,000 none of these coins had particularly low authorized mintages (at 200,000 the 1997 Jackie Robinson coin had the lowest authorized mintage). None of them have actual mintages that are particularly low for modern commemoratives either, as 48 out of 77 others have combined (UNC + PRF) mintages less than 350,000. The 2017 Boys Town coins with 12,234 UNC and 31,610 PRF coins are, again, the actual low mintage modern commemorative silver dollar coins.

This has been a long post, with a lot numbers, but it might have some food for thought for anyone thinking about going "all-in" on the Apollo coins before they jump in

The Kennedy in this set is Enhanced Reverse Proof, so if you want a regular proof, you still have to buy that separately. Or, if you want a really complete set of Kennedys, you have to buy this set in addition to the regular issues (or wait for the secondary market).

Ooops, that's right. Sorry, hadn't had my morning coffee. Corrected.

SO to be clear....the PRODUCT (two coin set) is limited to 100k. THe individual coins as a group of halves (PF, UNC & Kennedy) is limited to 750k total

There is nothing preventing the Mint from releasing more Kennedy's either individually or in a Kennedy set..nothing is listed to confirm this but it HAS happened before

If you think they will sell 650k unc's and additional PF's then there is no issue