Mark Twain Gold

These go on sale tomorrow. Not much of a buzz. Anyone buying?


http://catalog.usmint.gov/mark-twai...ed-coin-16CJ.html?cgid=commemoratives#start=1


http://catalog.usmint.gov/mark-twain-2016-5-gold-proof-coin-16CH.html?cgid=commemoratives#start=1

 

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No - just another bullion coin from the US Mint

 

I think that they are cool =)

 

I do like the looks of them, but commemorative gold from the mint generally does not do well long term. I do not like them enough to buy without at least a decent chance at profit one day, so no, I will not be buying.

 

Nope. Will get one of the silver proofs. And I'm not totally married to that idea.

 

The silvers are WAY too busy. If they had this design for silver I might bite.

 

Based on what the $5 could be, I really don't like it. The water coming from the wheel looks like "spaghetti" and the water around the boat looks like rope.

Like some have mentioned about the $1, I also don't like the way the mint is not spelling out the denomination on most of the recent commems.

 

I thought the mint announced that they were postponing the release of these coins....per the Mint News Blog

 

Just the one dollars, in the hopes that those that have to have a Twain now, will by the gold.

 

Not into the modern market these days. I do love Twain,but the subject matter on the silver reverse is a turn off. I like the gold design but not into buying the gold. If the designs were different I maybe pull the trigger.
I recall seeing the designs when posted in Coin World. And then when they announced what won I was like . Wow the U.S. Mint picked some real looser by my liking.

 

Apparently the Mint couldn't get the correct Mark Twain story on the silver COA. Shows how interested they are in that version and/or how incompetent they are. They're having to redo it.

 

As you might have guessed by my signature, I'm a big fan of his.
And if the Mint made a coin that looked good or had a decent mintage, I'd have bought one

 

After reading many of his works and biographies, somehow I don't find him on a gold coin, I disagree with the "strong serious portrait" picture and I don't see him being on a US coin as something he would have wanted.

I'm a bit shocked at this coin.

I would have thought first - a silver coin. Mark Twain didn't even exist until his stint in Nevada. He has much stronger ties to silver and Virginia City and the silver rush than he ever had to gold. He was actually a silver miner in the Comstock area, and wrote about it several times.

Second - I see him as more of a comedic nay-sayer rather than a strong serious portrait shown in the picture. And the paddle-boat was a weak attempt to link him to a single story. The portrait used makes him look closer to Carl Marx than Sam Clemens.

But hey, the government has been taught to have fun "whitewashing" history.

After all, it isn't even his real name.

The only thing that does seem to belong on that coin are the initials along the back of his neck.

I consider this one of the US Mint's ill-thought failures.

Or maybe just revenge for all of the news articles and stories he wrote bringing to light the shortcomings of the mint and it's management.

I guess they have replaced his silver life with gold-gilt fiction.

 

My education has been centered around Engineering, but as a "wanna be" English major, I was very excited to learn about these coins. Twain is generally acknowledged to have written the first authentic American novel, Huckleberry Finn, so given his literary accomplishments, the coins make sense. That said, I'm passing on the gold but do plan on getting the silver. It is interesting that the mint still has issues "getting it right."

 

I REALLY dislike the coins with the value done using the $ symbol. They look so cheesy, like tokens of some kind (Presidential dollars, and most of the recent Sacs for instance). Spell the value out (Five Dollars) please, it looks so much more classy!

 

I'm guessing this news story posted by Twain won't be anywhere in the paperwork or certificate.

An exerpt from a story on the SF Mint.

"the pay is now in green-backs instead of gold, and the payment often delayed, as at present, for four months, through inefficiency on the part of some one in Washington"

http://www.twainquotes.com/18640810c.html

 

I think how its interesting that the sales for gold coins are typically low for gold coins such as thease, do you think that will make tehse coins very popular in teh future, thus good family air looms?

 

It's hard to respond to that.

 

No I would not recommend buying these to be passed on as any sort of family heirloom. Yes the mintage's on these usually aren't massive but they are large enough that there is likely to be plenty in the market in the future for anyone that wants one. Like most other mint commemorative $5 gold coins it's likely these ending up being sold as bullion in the future versus having any numismatic premium.

 

There is no way to know for sure, but classic commemoratives aren't exactly hot themselves and they were made a generation or two ago. Sure they've appreciated, but unlike the classics these moderns will have no issues surviving in the highest grades barring a massive melting.