I just received the two gold coin set commemorating the 400th anniversary of the voyage of The Mayfower. The coins are quite beautiful ... BUT I couldn't help but notice that the U.S. commemorative $10 gold coin now weighs 1/4 of an ounce. Previously the $10 gold commemorative coins had weighed .483 of an ounce. Now they are little bigger than the $5 gold piece. Of course they had been made to the old standard, the issue price would have been well over $2,000.
I noticed that too. The commems were always $5 so it threw me off. Then I see they’re calling the 1/4 oz AGEs $10 now. The 1/10th oz are $5. I don’t think they were ever given a denomination before.
I did for two days in a row, but they popped up on the Mint's Website again, and someone here was kind enough to point that out to me. Therefore I was able to buy a set because the temporary cap was in my mouth that morning.
I knew they did I just didn't think the 1/10th had a denomination for some reason but I see it always did. Maybe this is why they changed the commemoratives.
No, I didn't want one of those. The $10,000 resale profit would nice, but the V-75 coin does absolutely nothing for me.
It's because "technically" these are not commemorative coins. The law only allows two commemorative coin programs each year, and both of this years programs were filled with the Basketball and Womens' voting centennial. To get around that problem they used the Secretary of the Treasury's' authority to use whatever design he wishes on the gold bullion coins of less than $50 denomination. So technically these are part of the gold bullion coin program and the 1/4 oz gold bullion coins have a $10 denomination. The design just "happens" to honor the Mayflower landing and thus nicely getting around the two commemorative program law without the need of additional legislation. They tried to use this once before to argue that it gave the Mint the legal authority to strike the gold Sac dollars since they used 1/2 oz gold bullion coin planchets. If they had made them gold Sac $25 coins they might have gotten away with it.