SEPTEMBER 6
2018•American Eagle Palladium
2013•Gold and Silver Coin Fraud Sentencing
The First American Palladium Eagle Proof Coin Goes on Sale
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On September 6, 2018, the United States Mint began selling the first proof edition of the American Eagle Palladium Coin. The release transformed a precious-metal bullion series that had debuted only a year earlier into a direct-to-collector numismatic program. Limited to 15,000 coins and struck at the West Point Mint, the one-ounce .9995 fine palladium piece carried a $25 denomination and paired two historic designs by Adolph A. Weinman.
Its obverse was a high-relief adaptation of Weinman’s celebrated Winged Liberty from the 1916 dime, popularly known as the Mercury dime. The reverse adapted the eagle Weinman created for the 1907 American Institute of Architects Gold Medal. The 2017 bullion Palladium Eagle had already introduced this combination to United States coinage; the 2018 release presented it for the first time in proof.
Sales opened at noon Eastern Time on September 6. Demand was intense. The Mint imposed an initial household order limit of one coin, and the product quickly became unavailable as collectors competed for one of the smallest proof mintages then offered in the American Eagle family.
From Bullion in 2017 to Proof in 2018
The American Palladium Eagle was the newest major precious-metal member of the American Eagle family. Gold and Silver Eagles had debuted in 1986, and Platinum Eagles followed in 1997. Palladium bullion coins did not appear until 2017.
The 2017 issue was an investment-oriented bullion product. Like other American Eagle bullion coins, it was distributed through the Mint’s Authorized Purchaser network rather than sold directly to individual customers.
The 2018 proof changed that relationship. It was a numismatic product created specifically for collectors and offered directly by the United States Mint. The underlying metal, weight and Weinman designs remained familiar from the 2017 bullion coin, but the method of manufacture, finish, packaging, sales system and limited production gave the proof a distinctly different identity.
September 6 therefore marks an important transition in the series: the day the Palladium Eagle became not only a bullion coin but a proof collector coin.
A Maximum of Just 15,000 Coins
The United States Mint set both the product limit and mintage limit at 15,000 pieces. The household order limit was initially one coin.
That ceiling was exceptionally small compared with many modern Mint products and especially striking beside the enormous mintages associated with circulating coins. It reflected the specialized nature of palladium collecting, the high intrinsic value of the metal and the Mint’s cautious approach to a young series.
The coin was initially offered for $1,387.50. As with other precious-metal numismatic products, the price was subject to the Mint’s pricing grid and could change with fluctuations in the market price of palladium.
The $25 denomination therefore bore little relationship to the coin’s retail price. Its legal-tender face value identified it as United States money, but the one-ounce palladium content and numismatic characteristics drove its actual market value.
The 2018 proof was struck at the West Point Mint and carries the W mint mark.
West Point had become a central production facility for modern American precious-metal coinage. Originally established as a bullion depository and later used for coin production, it became an official branch mint in 1988. Gold, silver, platinum and palladium American Eagles have all been associated with the facility.
For the proof Palladium Eagle, West Point’s role was especially fitting. The facility’s modern identity is closely tied to premium collector and bullion products rather than the mass circulation output associated with Philadelphia and Denver.
The W on the 2018 coin thus forms part of the issue’s numismatic identity: first palladium proof, one-ounce .9995 fine palladium, historic Weinman designs, and West Point manufacture.
Winged Liberty: The “Mercury Dime” Design
The obverse is based on one of the most admired designs in American coinage.
In 1916, Adolph A. Weinman created a new dime featuring Liberty wearing a winged cap. The wings symbolized liberty of thought. The public, however, saw a resemblance to Mercury, the Roman messenger god often represented with winged headgear. The nickname “Mercury dime” took hold and remains standard collector terminology.
Weinman’s dime circulated from 1916 through 1945. Its obverse became one of the signature designs of the artistic transformation of American coinage in the early twentieth century.
For the Palladium Eagle, the Mint adapted the portrait in high relief and enlarged it to the scale of a one-ounce precious-metal coin. The inscriptions include LIBERTY, IN GOD WE TRUST and the date, along with Weinman’s initials.
The larger format allows viewers to appreciate modeling and details that are necessarily compressed on a dime only 17.9 millimeters in diameter.
The reverse has a different origin. It was adapted from Weinman’s design for the 1907 American Institute of Architects Gold Medal.
The image shows an eagle holding a branch. When the United States Mint launched the Palladium Eagle program, it noted that the design had never previously appeared on a United States coin.
This makes the Palladium Eagle more than a simple revival of an old coin type. Its obverse resurrects a famous circulating-coin design, while its reverse converts historic medallic art into coinage.
The reverse inscriptions include UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, $25, 1 OZ. Pd .9995 FINE and E PLURIBUS UNUM.
Together, the two sides form a unified tribute to Weinman. Few modern United States coins rely so completely on the work of a single historic sculptor while drawing from two separate original works.
Adolph A. Weinman’s Remarkable Second Life on American Eagles
Weinman’s influence on modern American precious-metal coinage extends well beyond palladium.
He also designed the Walking Liberty half dollar, introduced in 1916. Seventy years later, the Mint revived Walking Liberty for the obverse of the American Silver Eagle in 1986. The design has remained one of the most recognizable images in modern bullion coinage.
With the introduction of the Palladium Eagle in 2017, a second Weinman Liberty joined the American Eagle family. Walking Liberty represented silver; Winged Liberty represented palladium.
The 2018 proof emphasized the connection by presenting Winged Liberty with the special surface contrast and careful manufacture of proof coinage. It was not simply a bullion coin struck with polished dies. It was a collector-focused presentation of Weinman’s art.
“Proof” does not mean that a coin is merely in exceptionally good condition. It describes a special manufacturing format intended for collectors.
Modern proof production typically involves specially prepared dies and planchets and controlled striking designed to create sharp detail and distinctive surfaces. The resulting contrast between mirrored fields and frosted design elements can make sculptural forms stand out dramatically.
That treatment was particularly effective on the Palladium Eagle because both sides were conceived as sculptural designs. Winged Liberty’s hair, cap and facial modeling and the reverse eagle’s feathers and branch all respond strongly to differences in texture and reflected light.
The proof finish therefore changed the visual experience of designs collectors had first seen on the 2017 bullion issue.
Palladium: An Unusual Coinage Metal
Palladium belongs to the platinum group of metals. It has important industrial uses, particularly in catalytic converters, electronics and chemical applications, and its market price can fluctuate substantially in response to industrial demand and supply.
Unlike gold and silver, palladium has almost no traditional role in circulating United States coinage. Its appearance in the American Eagle program reflects the modern era of investment-oriented precious-metal coins rather than a revival of a historic U.S. denomination.
Each 2018 proof contains one troy ounce of palladium at .9995 fineness—99.95 percent pure. The coin’s statutory $25 face value does not attempt to track the market value of that metal.
This disconnect is normal for modern precious-metal Eagles. Their denominations establish legal-tender status, while their bullion content and collector demand determine their practical economic value.
The Palladium Eagle did not emerge overnight. Congress enacted the American Eagle Palladium Bullion Coin Act of 2010, which laid the legal foundation for a one-ounce .9995 fine palladium coin with a $25 face value.
The legislation also required the Mint to obtain an independent study of whether sufficient market demand existed for palladium bullion coins. The eventual program retained the Weinman designs specified by law and culminated in the first bullion release in 2017.
The first proof followed in 2018.
This sequence demonstrates the distance that can separate authorization from actual coin production. A law may create a program years before market studies, design adaptation, production planning and precious-metal procurement finally produce a coin that collectors can buy.
Strong Demand on Release Day
The combination of first-year proof status and a 15,000-coin limit made the September 6 release a natural target for modern-coin collectors.
The Mint’s one-per-household restriction during the initial sales period was intended to slow concentration of the supply. Even so, the product quickly became unavailable.
Modern Mint launches with small production limits often generate intense opening-day demand. Buyers know that if the authorized quantity sells through, obtaining the coin later may require purchasing from another collector or dealer at whatever price the secondary market establishes.
For the 2018 Palladium Eagle Proof, the “first” designation added another attraction. Collectors were not simply chasing a low-mintage annual issue; they were buying the inaugural proof of an entirely new American Eagle metal series.
The 2018 proof also established a pattern that became one of the defining characteristics of the Palladium Eagle collector series.
In 2019, the Mint issued a reverse proof version. In 2020, it offered an uncirculated collector edition. In 2021, the series returned to proof.
The same core Weinman artwork could therefore be viewed under three markedly different surface treatments. A traditional proof emphasizes mirrorlike fields and frosted devices; a reverse proof reverses much of that visual relationship; an uncirculated collector finish creates a third appearance.
That rotating format gave the young series a distinctive collecting structure. Rather than changing the design every year, the Mint changed how the design interacted with light.
September 6, 2018 was the starting point for that collector sequence.
A Bridge Between Classic and Modern Numismatics
The first Palladium Eagle Proof is fundamentally a modern coin. Its metal, denomination, legal authority, West Point manufacture and sales method belong to the twenty-first century.
Artistically, however, it reaches backward more than a century.
The reverse eagle originated in 1907. Winged Liberty arrived on the dime in 1916. Weinman died in 1952, decades before the American Eagle program existed. Yet his artwork became the visual foundation of a palladium coin first issued in bullion form in 2017 and proof form in 2018.
That mixture is one of the defining characteristics of modern American precious-metal coinage. Rather than abandoning the nation’s classic coin designs, the Mint has repeatedly used them to establish continuity between the great sculptors of the past and new bullion programs.
September 6, 2018 marks the day the American Palladium Eagle crossed an important threshold. The program had already produced bullion coins, but now collectors could purchase the Weinman design directly from the Mint as a limited proof.
The coin contained one ounce of .9995 fine palladium, carried a $25 denomination, bore the W mint mark and was limited to 15,000 pieces. More importantly for the series, it inaugurated the collector-finish tradition that would distinguish Palladium Eagles in subsequent years.
Its artwork connected the release to the Mercury dime, to a 1907 architectural medal, and to Adolph A. Weinman’s enormous influence on American numismatics. Its metal and manufacture placed it firmly in the modern precious-metal era.
On September 6, 2018, those strands came together in the first proof Palladium Eagle—a coin only one year removed from the birth of the series, but built from more than a century of American coin and medal art.
ALSO ON THIS DAY
2013 — Gold and Silver Coin Fraud Sentencing — A federal judge sentenced a defendant in a bank-fraud and identity-theft scheme involving fraudulent online purchases of gold and silver coins.