Bald Eagle Commemorative Coins- One Week Left

Sales of the US Mint's 2008 Bald Eagle Commemorative Coins will officially end on December 12, 2008 at 5:00 PM ET. Sales of the 2008 American Legacy Collection, which includes a Bald Eagle Commemorative will end on the same date.

Coins offered under the Bald Eagle Commemorative Program include a $5 Gold, $1 Silver, and 50 cent clad coin. Sales began January 15, 2008. Since that date, two of the individual product ordering options have sold out: the 3 Coin Proof Set and the Young Collector's Set.

None of the individual coins have met their authorized production limits. The $5 Gold was limited to 100,000 coins, the $1 Silver to 500,000 coins, and the 50c Clad to 750,000 coins. When the program was first announced, I thought there was a good chance that some of the issues would reach their production limits. A combination of the volatile precious metals markets and the variety of other Mint offerings this year may have prevented this.

The most recent sales figures are shown below. The third column "Total" takes into account individual coins included in the set offerings.

Bald Eagle Commemorative Coin Sales

	Unc	Proof	Total
$5 Gold	13,957	33,507	72,464
$1 Silver	89,532	243,372	360,179
50c Clad	95,962	175,883	294,602
3 Coin Pr Set	N/A	25,000
Young Coll Set	22,757	N/A
Coin & Medal Set	27,275	N/A

One thing that bears watching is the 2008 American Legacy Collection. This collection is a specially packaged proof set that includes a $1 Silver Proof Bald Eagle coin. This collection went on sale October 27, 2008 and is limited to 50,000 sets.

I have not been able to track down any indication of how many of the sets have sold to date. In past yearsLast year, sales of the sets have been extremely low, causing them to quickly appreciate on the secondary market once sales end. It's possible that the same thing could happen this year.

If I find any sales stats for the 2008 American Legacy Collection, I will post them. But for now, it's an intriguing unknown.