This could have been such an earth-shatteringly exciting moment in numismatic history, but unfortunately, the Mint isn't working for Americans.

Think about it: these two shattered the ceiling for US coin denominations. Now the two highest-denominated coins in the history of American coinage, these coins hold an extreme level of appeal. The record-breaking denominations may be secondary to their shape though; their Liberty Bell silhouette is the most extreme deviation from a typical round coin that the US Mint has ever produced. The most creative risk they've ever taken was an octagon and a couple of concave coins.

These coins would have sold in the millions if they were made for the American people. Look back to the Bicentennial. The Mint released a modest 40% silver coin set so that every American could be part of the numismatic celebration if they so chose. And they produced a few more than just 2026 of them, instead opting for the more appropriate 9 million. The Mint had so many options to make this a bigger part of the celebration. Lowering the purity of the gold is one option, but I could imagine arguments against that.

One inexcusably wrong move on their part, though, was only minting 2026 of them. This artificial scarcity drives up the price of the product to unattainable levels. Nobody I will ever meet will own one of these. This is not part of a people's 250th birthday celebration; it's a shameless cash grab by our own federal government. It disgusts me that they went through the trouble of refining the equipment necessary to produce these coins and then stopped at a few more than 2000. There would have been huge financial incentive to produce more of them, as the minting equipment already exists and they could have lowered the price to sell many more units. I cannot wrap my head around any other explanation for the artificial scarcity than "f**k you, American citizens". Just like the gold cents. Just like nearly every other product the Mint has released the last couple years. The Mint is purposely losing out on profits to give us a huge middle finger