By LCC Writing Team

Glenn Holsonbake received the Lawrence J. Gentile Sr. Memorial Award for Outstanding Adult Advisor during the American Numismatic Association’s Summer Seminar Session 2 graduation banquet on July 1, 2015. This award is presented annually to an individual who has recruited and mentored Young Numismatists and aided in the development of intermediate to advanced young collectors.

The Coins for A’s program began in 2011 and in just 4 years it has come a long way. When the program began, there were only 60 kids involved. Now, there are 800 students sending in their report cards to receive a world coin from the ANA.

Our most recent Commemorative Coin, the cupped-shape baseball coin, is faring well so far.� The Silver Coin has it its limited mintage of 400,000 and the golds also sold out at 50,000.� The clads, which have sold more than 200,000 so far, is still well under the Mint’s limit of 750,000. �The Silver baseball coins are selling for $100 to $150 on ebay which is double to triple their selling price of $50, so that’s a real home run!� The gold version is also selling at a significant amount their original sale price from the Mint.� Coins that have been graded by the major grading companies and have achieved a score of MS69 or MS70 are going for even more.� Some dealers have even been able to start “selling the label”, with autographs of baseball stars and the like.� I don’t know if these are real autographs or photocopies on the label, but it seems that it is really popular, and people are paying a premium for labels even way above the grade.� I don’t know whatever happened to the adage of buy the coin not the label!� Even though that I think that that was referring to the grade that the grading company put on the label say in between an AU58 and an MS 63, the coin may look the same, even though they are two separate grades on 2 scales, but in this more recent case, people are literally just buying the “special label”, like it’s a baseball card!� I once heard a dealer tell a customer at a show “sure this is more expensive, it’s got the “special orange label”! ��Duhey!�� Getting back to the baseball coins, surprisingly, the clads aren’t doing too bad short-term, commonly selling for about $40 dollars on eBay now for people that do want to wait for the Mint to ship their coin.� But these coins will probably hold no long-term value, as proven by the Mint many times with other Commemorative programs. �I received a Silver Proof baseball coin from my Dad as a gift and intend to hold on to it long-term and see how the value pans out long-term. �Meanwhile, I am doing jobs around the house and neighborhood and watching my savings carefully to see if I can save for the much acclaimed four-coin 2014 50th�Anniversary Kennedy Half Dollar Silver Coin Collection Set that will be released this Summer.� This Silver Set will for sure sell-out.� The Mint hasn’t said much about the Silver and Gold sets, and they are not even on the US Mint’s Website yet.� So it isn’t clear as to when these will be released, but rumor and recent coin articles indicate that they will be released at the large ANA show in Rosemont, IL,�August 5-9, 2014. ��What is on the Mint’s website for release at the end of July and at a price of $9.95 is a 2 coin Clad set, P&D with some sort of special finish.� I don’t think these will be worth much long term, as almost all clad sets have decreased in value from the issue price.� There are probably a few exceptions though, and that would be something I would like to research, perhaps for the next article I write. �In the meantime, I am definitely looking forward to the release of the new Kennedy’s and think that they will be a hit with the public .� Also, more importantly, maybe cool coins like these will get more kids my age into the great world of Numismatics.

Over the next several months the U.S. Mint will be rolling out three new products in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy half dollar. Marc Landry, the Mint’s Acting Associate Director of Sales and Marketing, outlined the Mint’s plans for the sale of these items during a teleconference on Wednesday, July 16, 2014.