Commems Collection Classic: Quick Bits 109 - Protecting Collectors

The abuses faced by collectors of US commemorative coins in the mid-1930s is well documented, with sponsor/dealer market manipulation and collector exploitation being leading issues. Strong contributors to the issues were the multi-year coin programs, the use of multiple Mint facilities and small-quantity mintages to create "instant" rarities for which sponsors knew that "completist" collectors would compete.

I've previously posted about the mid-1930s Senate Committee on Banking and Currency, and how it developed a template/set of guidelines for commemorative coin proposals in an effort to support collectors. You can check out the template guidelines here:

- Quick Bits #44 - Senate Committee On Banking And Currency

The Senate and House extended matters a bit further for more than a dozen coin proposals between 1936 and 1937 - these bills incorporated wording that further limited sponsor coin orders with wording such as "not less than twenty-five thousand such coins shall be issued to it [the sponsor] at any one time."

Not all bills of the time period included the language, but the majority did:

1936 Albany, NY Charter 250th Anniversary
1937 Battle of Antietam 75th Anniversary
1936 Arkansas Statehood Centennial - Robinson Type
1936 Cleveland, OH Centennial - Great Lakes Exposition
1936 Delaware Tercentenary
1936 Elgin IL Centennial
1936 Battle of Gettysburg 75th Anniversary
1936 Norfolk, VA Bicentennial/Tricentennial
1936 San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge Opening
1936 Wisconsin Territorial Centennial
1936 York County, ME Tercentenary
1937 Roanoke Colony Memorial 350th Anniversary
1938 New Rochelle, NY 250th Anniversary

The 25,000 coin minimum helped ensure that access to the coins would be more fair for all desiring collectors and efforts to manipulate the market would be greatly curtailed. A quick scan of the coin list presented reveals coins that were (and are) readily available to those collectors with a desire to have one - no artificial rarities among them. In fact, many of the coins on the list did not sell all 25,000 coins struck, and their sponsor returned a quantity to the Mint to be melted.

I've posted multiple stories about each of the coins on the list, you can check them out via: Commems Collection.