It is nearly halfway through the professional baseball season as summer approaches. Some may argue that this is the best time of year for sports as ballparks fill up even more so due to school being out. There is something quite special about the sounds, the smells, and the overall feel of attending America’s greatest pastime no matter which part of the country you are in.
So it makes quite a bit of sense that of all the commemoratives the United States Mint has produced, a modern commemorative featuring such a pastime would make its debut and revive the world that is modern U.S. commemoratives.
To delve deeper into this commemorative and its importance in the numismatic hobby, we go to Whitman Publishing’s 100 Greatest US Modern Coins publishing that features a compiled list of the top 100 coins influenced by some of the hobby’s greatest coin dealers. Let us see how authors Scott Schechter and Jeff Garrett tee up this selection in the publication’s fourth and latest edition.
#46 - 2014 Baseball Hall of Fame Commemoratives
As the 75th Anniversary of the Baseball Hall of Fame approached in 2014, Congress was looking to issue commemorative coins to honor the major event. Legislation that was presented called for a three-coin program that would feature a clad half dollar, a silver dollar, and a $5 gold coin, but it also requested that the coins look like a ball which meant the coinage was to be curved and feature an actual ball on the reverse.
With the intent on reviving modern commemoratives and their prior year struggles with sales, an open design contest was announced by the United States Mint that was presented to find the obverse design. The winning design was chosen based on the open glove concept that fit right in with the curved and concave appeal of the design. Cassie McFarland, a graphic artist by trade, was the winning designer and is still highly commended within the hobby for her simple, yet incredible design.
Traditional mintage limits for U.S. modern commemoratives are usually set high and rarely reached, but when these baseball themed coins went on sale on March 27, 2014, the $5 gold coin, with a limit of 50,000, was sold out by late afternoon the same day. The silver dollar followed next as its 400,000 limit was sold out by April 9th. Although the half dollar was not sold out (mintage limit of 750,000), it still remains one of the best selling half dollar commemoratives in many years.
As per usual, certification companies have seen their fair share of these coins in the grading room. Special Hall of Fame, authorized facsimiles, and actual signature labels gave the program and even bigger facelift and made them that much more of a collector item. Not only did you have coin collectors purchasing these coins, but baseball fanatics alike were also interested in these coins due to the sheer fact that they were unique and nothing like they had ever seen.