American Arts Commemorative Gold Medals--anybody got any info/history??

Dukie101 · July 5, 2003 5:10AM

Louis Armstong Gold Medal/Grant Wood Gold Medal???

kranky · July 5, 2003 6:32AM

These were issued from 1980-84 in one ounce gold and half-ounce gold sizes. They aren't legal tender, although they are "official" in that Congress created the program. Apparently the lack of being legal tender caused people to avoid the medals and in general the program was a flop. The Mint had high hopes, striking 1 million 1/2 ounce and 500,000 1 oz. medals for the 1980 issues, and you can see how many had to be melted down. In 1980-81 the medals were very "medal-like" and in 1982 they were changed to look more like coins (dates put in the field, reeded edges, rim beading, adding the legend "United States of America") By the last year, they only struck 20,000 at a time to avoid huge melt numbers. The medals were distributed by J. Aron & Co.

The medals and number sold were:
1980 1 oz. Grant Wood 312,709 / 1/2 oz. Marian Anderson 281,624
1981 1 oz. Mark Twain 116,371 / 1/2 oz. Willa Cather 97,331
1982 1 oz. Louis Armstrong 409,098 / 1/2 oz. Frank Lloyd Wright 348,305
1983 1 oz. Robert Frost 390,669 / 1/2 oz. Alexander Calder 74,571
1984 1 oz. Helen Hayes 33,546 / 1/2 oz. John Steinbeck 32,572

tincup · July 5, 2003 6:34AM

The American Arts gold medallions were issued by the U.S. Mint; they started either 1979 or 1980. A one ounce and a 1/2 ounce were issued each year; different people were commemorated on each one. If I remember correctly, Grant Wood was the first year one ounce issue, and Marion Anderson was the 1/2 ounce. The medallions were issued for perhaps 5 years. The first one or two years, the medallions did not state that they contained 1 or 1/2 ounce of gold; due to public response, later issues did have the gold content on the medallion.

I think these are a very underrated, and overlooked, Mint issued item. It can be argued that they are actually gold commemoratives; and thus would be our first 'modern' commemoratives. I do not know the original mintages (if someone else knows, let me know!), but I'm sure a good number of them got melted down during the gold and silver melt of 1980-81. Some of the later issues probably did not have very high original mintages, due to lack of public interest. Hope this helps!

tincup · July 5, 2003 6:36AM

kranky--- Thanks for the mintage figures. I wonder how many still exist---- Wouldn't mind having a complete set myself.

kranky · July 5, 2003 6:37AM

Original mintages:

1980 1 oz. Grant Wood 500,000 / 1/2 oz. Marian Anderson 1,000,000
1981 1 oz. Mark Twain 141,000 / 1/2 oz. Willa Cather 200,000
1982 1 oz. Louis Armstrong 420,000 / 1/2 oz. Frank Lloyd Wright 360,000
1983 1 oz. Robert Frost 500,000 / 1/2 oz. Alexander Calder 410,000
1984 1 oz. Helen Hayes 35,000 / 1/2 oz. John Steinbeck 35,000

Dukie101 · July 5, 2003 6:40AM

Thanks--Kranky and Tincup. Kranky ,where did you get the mintage on these coins???? Any idea of value??? I've got a Louis Armstong that I am thinking about selling.Does PCGS or NGC slab these???

kranky · July 5, 2003 6:52AM

The mintage information was from the "Coin World Almanac", a great book.

I don't have a clue what the value is. PCGS slabs them, the coin number for the Louis Armstrong is 20505.

cointagious · July 5, 2003 7:15AM

i've seen slabbed pieces selling at a hefty premium on teletrade - if those sales are legit. if you sell them to a dealer, we'll offer you melt and that seems to be the dealer to dealer market.

tincup · July 5, 2003 7:45AM

The higher mintage medallions, such as the Grant Wood and M. Anderson, basically sell for bullion; I see some premium occasionally on the lower mintage ones. I also have seen some of the slabbed ones appear to sell for a good premium. Anyone know the pops on any of the slabbed ones? With the low mintages on some, questionable survival rate, and unknown higher grades, some of these could be a nice item to acquire. I don't think very many collectors know about these gold 'coins'. If more of the 'modern' collectors, who are collecting the modern commemoratives, start obtaining these medallions, they could become a hot item. A neat item, and a short, complete set.

ANACS will also slab these gold medallions.

Conder101 · July 6, 2003 3:56AM

There were two reasons why the program wasn't very popular. One the government had a record of you buying the gold (remember this was just a few years after gold ownership was legalized.) and two the system the government set up to buy the medallians was to say the least annoying.

To buy the art medals you went to the Post Office and picked up an order blank, then went elsewhere and called a special phone number that gave you the latest spot quote, a time reference and an order number. Then you went back to the post office again and ordered the medal. Payment had to be made with Postal Money Orders and I believe it had to be timestamped by the post office within a cetain amount of time after the time reference from the phone call or else it would not be valid and you would have to start the process over again. (Gold was very volitile when the regulations were written the govenment was wanting to make sure they weren't selling high value gold to someone who had gotten a low quote and then just held it to lock in a low price in case gold went up significantly. They were afraid people would get a quote first thing in the morning and wait until the end of the day before ordering. If gold went down just toss the order and try again the next day, if it went up a bunch then they would order with the early morning low quote. So they set up this system to prevent it.)

Longacre · March 21, 2006 11:54PM

I was going to ask a question about these because there was a write-up on them in the appendix to QDB's Commemorative Encyclopedia. This answers the questions that I had, but I wanted to give it a bump because there is a lot of interesting info.

Does anyone have any pictures of the medals?

American Arts Commemorative Gold Medals--anybody got any info/history??

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