AUDIO: COINWEEK INTERVIEWS HEIDI WASTWEET

Heidi Wastweet is an award-winning medallic artist.

Over the course of her 30-year career, she has designed more than 1,000 coins, medals, and tokens, mostly for private mints.

From 2010 to 2018, Heidi sat on the CCAC, where she, along with other members of the art community and general public, deliberated on the direction of American coin and medal design.

If you have purchased a coin or medal from the U.S. Mint made within the past eight years, odds are that Heidi had a role to play in the design process.

What is the state of coin and medal design in America and what can be done to improve upon it?

We ask Heidi these questions and more, this week on the CoinWeek Podcast.

To listen to the complete podcast, see:
CoinWeek Podcast #103: Coin Design Highs and Lows with Heidi Wastweet (https://coinweek.com/coinweek-podcast/coinweek-podcast-coin-design-highs-and-lows-with-heidi-wastweet/)

Today’s public meeting of the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee (CCAC) centered on the design of a dollar coin proposed to be the first minted under the American Innovation $1 Coin Act. The program’s coins are scheduled to share a common Statue of Liberty design on the obverse. The CCAC focused more on which of the eight designs submitted for the reverse was to be recommended to the secretary of the Treasury. Round dissatisfaction with the portfolio prompted a motion to not recommend any of the reverse designs to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. The motion passed unanimously, 10-0, and various committee members voiced their dissatisfaction with the reverse designs, the proposed obverse design, and the program in general.

Member Dennis Tucker, the committee’s numismatic specialist, pointed out that the legend on the reverse of the 2018 coin designs, mandated by legislation, may be misleading, since the name of the program is “American Innovation” and not “American Innovators,” the latter of which is to be inscribed on the coin. He contends that this narrowing of focus may limit designs to specific people who are innovators and not larger ideas or themes about American innovation that can be expressed on coinage. “Making the coin’s legend consistent with the language of the legislation is Copywriting 101,” said Tucker, who serves as publisher for Whitman Publishing, LLC, which releases the annual Guide Book of United States Coins. “Innovations aren’t necessarily physical. If a state or territory innovated in a non-physical way—for example, it was the first state to allow women to vote; or it innovated in religious freedom—then innovators isn’t the right word.” He pointed out that innovation isn’t limited to inventions or patents, but could be philosophical, cultural, artistic, linguistic, social, creative, or otherwise intangible, and not necessarily requiring a single person as innovator.

Donald Scarinci, the senior member of the committee, voiced his disappointment toward the portfolio, saying that it was “not just a failure to the hobby community, but a failure to the greatest country on Earth.” Scarinci also drew a comparison between American coin designs and foreign coin designs, noting that the former tends to be outdone by the latter. In a bold move, he called for a collector boycott of the program.

To read the complete article, see:
The CCAC unanimously rejects the reverse designs submitted for the 2018 American Innovation $1 coin (http://news.coinupdate.com/the-ccac-unanimously-rejects-the-reverse-designs-submitted-for-the-2018-american-innovation-1-coin/)

To see the complete set of proposed designs, see:
CCAC Meeting Images for the 2018 American Innovation $1 Coin Program (https://www.usmint.gov/news/ccac-meetings/2018-american-innovation-dollar-coin)

Please, make it stop!

Put before the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee (CCAC) on Thursday, July 31 was a portfolio of designs for the first coin of an ill-conceived new supposedly circulating commemorative coin series that will be produced over the course of the next decade and a half by the United States Mint.

Luckily for the hobby and the public at-large, the CCAC soundly rejected these designs with a unanimous 10-0 vote. Had the final tally been 100-0 against, the proposed designs would not have received a sufficient rebuke.

To read the complete article, see:
Make it Stop: Perhaps Worst Conceived US Coin Design Candidates Revealed (https://coinweek.com/us-mint-news/make-it-stop-perhaps-worst-conceived-us-coin-design-candidates-revealed/)

To read the complete article, see:
Request for applications for appointment to the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee (http://news.coinupdate.com/request-for-applications-for-appointment-to-the-citizens-coinage-advisory-committee-2/)

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