Indeed SalivateMetals – no plagiarism intended 😉 – I am probably just as fiercely opposed to what I see as the incessant application of political correctness and the conflation of one who is opposed to the modern day use of political correctness (often as a weapon to silence a certain perspective or position) to “racist” as you are….our only difference here seems to be how we interpret the motivation or thinking of the US Mint in its design decision to include women in a coin series, some of whom just happen to not be depicted as caucasian. There’s no evidence to suggest (that I’ve seen) that there won’t be a depiction of a caucasian woman later in this series. That this series is a legitimate representation (albeit, symbolic or allegorical) of our current culture in regards to the diversity of racial make-up of women here, doesn’t in any way come across as being a result of political correctness….merely representative of our current culture or the reality on the ground.

Have a terrific day!

Thanks for the reminder, Seth!

I do now recall that the US Mint has previously delineated what you’d written.

As an aside, in recent years, I have grown to be much more a collector of medals (new and old and from around the world including many of those from Europe, China, and the U.S.) than coins. The fact that the U.S. Mint has offered collectors a beautiful (and record setting sell-out) proof silver Amer Liberty silver medal in 2016 and will be releasing 5 Amer. Liberty silver medals in 2017 is just icing on the cake for me as a medal enthusiast and collector. Less silver coins, more silver medals is fine with me!

Keep up the fine work of sharing worthwhile info on numismatics that you are doing.

The only AL silver medal offered on June 14 will be the 2017-P Proof version in regular low relief. The other 4 versions with different finishes from each of the 4 Mint facilities will be offered later in the year as a 4-medal set only. There is no mintage limit, no product limit & no household limit on these beautiful medals that are great companions to the gold $100 AL coin.

Happy coin & medal collecting!

-NumisDudeTx

“CoinsA-Z that was an awesome video! I watched it on my tv and one thing I don’t understand is all the lint and debri that comes with it. For a high relief coin one would think the mint would do something about cleanliness! The coin looked a lot better then the last one did with no scratches on it. I can’t wait for the silver coins to come out and hope that everyone that wants one will get a chance to buy like maybe 1 to 5 per household instead of the big companies gobbling them up and reselling them for 10 times over the cost.”

Thanks for your compliment. I suppose the cost of producing coins in a virtually dust free environment would be radically cost prohibitive, but I do understand your sentiment. I’m convinced that before the days of the strong embracing of TPGing by coin collectors, that more than mere dust and lint were tolerated by the vast majority of coin collectors on collector coins coming straight from the mint. Expecting absolute perfect coins seems to have reached a hysteria level with some collectors (I’m not implying that for you). I have spoken with some old time coin collectors who have all told me in one form or another that when they received coins from the mint that unless the coin was in devastatingly poor condition, that they didn’t care whether the collector coin had minor dings and scratches.

Personally, I could be considered one of those collectors who are obsessed with receiving new collector (as opposed to bullion) coins from any mint which have to be virtually visually flawless or I’m not going to be happy. I think a lot more than dust and lint these days (at least for silver coins), is the prevalence of the dreaded milk spots developing.

As for the silver 2017 Amer. Liberty medals, yes, I definitely have expectations to buy at least 1 of each of the 5 varieties. I’m assuming that all varieties will be available for purchase on the same opening day of sales.

Hi SalivateMetal,

I’m probably not going out on a limb to assume that you are one and the same as SalivateMetal on YouTube. If you are, I certainly feel like I should take this opportunity to let others here in this venue know (if they do not already) how informative your videos and video channel is. For those not familiar with that channel which covers topics related to coins, precious metals, and related topics, please consider taking a look and consider subscribing to SalivateMetal’s YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIzYEzXT34388IscvgVADDA

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I respectfully disagree with you on a couple of your points.

First, I never suggested (even remotely) that claims of political correctness are synonymous to a racist attitude. It’s possible that I either didn’t make myself as clear as I’d thought I did or simply that you misconstrued what I’d written.

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Merriam Webster has a good working definition of political correctness (in my view) in the context of our discussions here: “conforming to a belief that language and practices which could offend political sensibilities (as in matters of sex or race) should be eliminated”. If one understand the explicit context of the choice of women represented in the American Liberty HR coin series (which the gold 2017 is the first of) noted officially by the US Mint itself, then one could not possibly (in any rational way that I’m aware of) expect the exclusion of depictions of women of color and therefore there would be no need to be motivated by political correctness to have women of color depicted on the coins in this series. Ergo, the 2017 Amer. Liberty coin is definitely not politically correct. I strongly encourage anyone who still clings to the notion that this coin is politically correct, to read the U.S. Mint’s reasoning behind choosing the design(s) that they did….has nothing to do with political correctness since the intention from the start was for the theme of “remembering our past, embracing the future” by honoring a diversity of women in the U.S. some being women of color.

Additionally, political correctness can indeed come in the form of representing people in the way I described previously….literary devices can be used to convey notions of political correctness. Think of my example as political correctness in the form of an intentional “inversion” of pre-abolition class structure as a means of eliminating these implicit role biases as to not offend the political sensibilities of people who are very uncomfortable with race-based class structure….even if it existed only in the past. So depicting the “Founding Fathers” as black and chattel enslaved people as white could indeed be a form of political correctness if it’s made to make a point while not offending the political sensibilities of some people.

Anyway, some might argue (and I could agree to some extent) that I have belabored my point about there being no political correctness with the 2017 Amer. Liberty HR gold coin. So I will just leave it as such: if you believe, unlike me, that the design of this coin in question is a result of political correctness, then we will simply have to agree to strongly disagree.

https://www.usmint.gov/cumulative-sales-figures?years=2017&2017weeks=917&2016weeks=&2015weeks=

The USMint doesn’t sell that many 1oz gold proof coins per year. Last year (2016) the total for the year was only 23,593. Remember the 21,275 sales for 2017 AM 225th Liberty 24k Gold 1OZ is only a 6 week total, there is still 7 months left in the year.