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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;flaminio, post: 193029, member: 213&quot;]Technically, yes. You could spend it for $50 worth of groceries. It&#039;s legal. Also, as you note, quite stupid.</p><p><br /></p><p>Back in 1996 when silver was about $4/oz, I &quot;celebrated&quot; my last day in grad school by buying a cup of coffee with a Silver American Eagle. These have an equally arbitrary face value of one dollar. The barista barely batted an eye, and tossed the big coin into the till, and I got my coffee.</p><p><br /></p><p>As for why a one ounce GAE is $50 -- who can say. It has to be some face value, else it wouldn&#039;t be a coin. Not that even that makes much difference -- a one ounce gold medal is worth the same as a one ounce gold coin, bullion-wise. But a lot more people collect coins than medals, so there&#039;s some consideration there. The Mint did try gold medals back in 1980-81, and they were a collossal flop. So, they just picked a face value and went with it -- no particular reason, just that it had to be sufficiently below the melt price of gold (otherwise I guess people <i>would</i> spend them!).[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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