This is not really a beautiful coin, but it is rare. It is available in the somewhat scarce uncirculated copper nickel 10 dollar format of very similar design, both in loose and carded format. It is also somewhat scarce and a ailabe in silver proof format. I only recall seeing this piece and the specimen in the Richard Stuart sale of Central American coins and so pretty scarce to rare in gold. I like it from the standpoint of history as this somewhat smallish battle/skirmish was significant in that it reflected the passing nadir of Spanish power and influence in the Americas.
1. It's gold, so it's beautiful. 2. It's rare gold, so it's beautiful. 3. The design isn't awful, and commemorates a historic event, so yeah... it's beautiful.
This coin was on my bucket list for quite a while and was sad to have missed the Richard Stuart specimen; when his coins came up for sale in 2017 I was in a rough patch and could not buy all the coins I wanted from Belize/British Honduras and Panama and some really great and rare coins came up for sale. I have never really seen a writeup on how he got so many rarities but suspect he had connections in Panama for those and possibly he or representative made the trip to Belmopan or whatever the name for the capitol of Belize is as some of those Belizean coins are very rare as well. I would imagine he purchased in bulk packages of many of the dates, and was quite the opportunity for him. Us sorry "out of touch" collectors have to wait and get coins kibble and bits style, which I suppose make the collecting of them a bit more of a challenge. I shutter to think what it would take to have a complete set of Panama 500 Balboa gold coins as I think a complete set of all the proof, matte and PL unc. coins would go for about 100k or above! Meanwhile I do like the coin for some crazy reason, perhaps the reasons that LM broaches....
