In 2012, the United States Mint will issue commemorative coins to mark the bicentennial of the writing of the Star Spangled Banner. The program will include $5 gold coins with a maximum mintage of 100,000 and silver dollars with a maximum mintage of 500,000. Under the authorizing legislation, the designs for the coins “shall be emblematic of the War of 1812 and particularly the Battle for Baltimore that formed the basis for the Star-Spangled Banner.”
Designs for the gold and silver commemorative coins will be selected by the Secretary of the Treasury following consultation with the Maryland War of 1812 Bicentennial Commission, the Commission of Fine Arts (CFA), and review by the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee (CCAC).
The recommendations of the CFA can be found in this article. The CCAC reviewed the design candidates provided by the United States Mint during a meeting held on July 26, 2011. This article appears today, due to scheduling and a delay in obtaining information.
The United States Mint provided the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee with with ten obverse and eight reverse design candidates for the $5 gold coin, and six obverse and nine reverse design candidates for the silver dollar. With the intention of recommending obverse and reverse designs that would compliment each other and suit the relative sizes of each coin, the CCAC reviewed all of the obverse and reverse design candidates together, and identified recommended designs for each coin. This resulted in situations where a design candidate that the US Mint had provided for the gold coin was recommended by the CCAC for the silver coin, and vice versa.
Recommendations of the Committee for the Star Spangled Banner $5 Gold Coin are shown above. The obverse depicts a naval Battle scene from the War of 1812 with an American ship appearing in the foreground and a damaged and fleeing British ship in the background. The reverse features American flags wtih 15 and 50 stars depicted together with an inscription “Long May It Wave”.
The Committee’s recommendations for the obverse and reverse designs of the 2012 Star Spangled Banner Silver Dollar are shown above. The obverse depicts Liberty waving an American flag with an image of Fort McHenry in the background. The reverse depicts an American flag with 50 stars, rendered in a modern fashion. Members of the Committee felt that the obverse and reverse design pairing “would convey a message about the endurance of the Republic and the of the flag from the time of the War of 1812 to the present.”
The complete slate of design candidates provided by the United States Mint appear below.
$5 Gold Obverse Design Candidates
$5 Gold Reverse Design Candidates
Silver Dollar Obverse Design Candidates
Silver Dollar Reverse Design Candidates
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