Good Medal Catalog For United States Mint, Etc.

Unfortunately, there isn't a single volume that lists all of the US Mint medals -- especially the more modern ones. Here are a couple of books that will provide good coverage of earlier issues:

• Julian, RW. Medals of the US Mint: The First Century 1792-1892. Token and Medal Society. 1977
• Failor, KM. Medals of the United States Mint Issued for Public Sale. Department of the Treasury. 1969

Both of these books are out-of-print but can usually be found from used book dealers; the Julian book can approach $100.

The Willa Cather gold medal you mentioned is one of 10 gold medals from the American Arts Medallion series from the early 1980s. Here's a link to a brief CoinWorld article that you might find useful http://www.coinworld.com/articles/a...-medallions/. You can also visit Wikipedia for a more in-depth article on the series http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americ...s_medallions.

To assemble a list of US Mint medals sold since the 1970s, I would suggest keeping your eye out for a copy of one of the small medal "catalogs" put out by the Mint from time to time. They sometimes pop-up on online auction sites.

Hope this helps a bit. Feel free to post specific questions that you have.