SHOULD THE U.S COMMEMORATIVE COIN PROGRAM BE SHUT DOWN?

To read the complete Coin World article, see: Obama OKs Lions Club commemorative coin (www.coinworld.com/articles/obama-oks-lions-club-commemorative-coin/)

The first U.S commemorative coin program was shut down in 1954 and the door to further issuance was nailed shut for 28 years because of abuses in the authorization and sales processes in the 1920s and 1930s.

Are we at such a point today when shutting the program down becomes the only logical remedy?

Reading the Page 1 story by David Ganz certainly makes me think so.

It is hard for me to write those words in one sense because back in 1982 when the modern commemorative program began, I was one of those commemorative coin starved collectors who had no memory of either those coins or the abuses that caused their termination.

I can’t speak for future generations of potentially commemorative starved collectors who will hanker to see their return if we do in fact abolish them, but that’s just the point. Future collectors in the generation to follow us will be able to make their own judgments just as we did back in 1982.

The hobby market will be able to work its own healing on the current oversupply of many of the commemoratives that were struck since 1982. I imagine the melting pot will capture many of them if gold and silver continue current trends and that could improve the desirability of the survivors.

To read the complete article, see: Time to kill off commemoratives (www.numismaticnews.net/article/time-to-kill-off-commemoratives)

Wayne Homren, Editor

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