2010 Grand Canyon National Park Silver Coin Recommendations

2010 kicks off a new series of quarters that will celebrate US national parks and national sites. The program of America the Beautiful Quarters will feature five rotating reverse designs each year until at least 2021.

In addition to the quarter-dollars, the United States Mint will also issue bullion five-ounce, .999 fine silver coins with designs that are duplicates of the quarters. The bullion coins will obviously be larger due to their weight. Their three inch diameter will actually make them double the size of early US silver coins, like the Morgan silver dollars.

The fourth quarter issued next year will commemorate the Grand Canyon in Arizona. Companion to it and also honoring the site will be the 2010 Grand Canyon National Park Silver Bullion Coin.

The US Mint has already created four differing coin design candidates emblematic of the park. These were submitted to the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee (CCAC) and the United States Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) — organizations tasked to review US coinage and medals designs and offer their recommendations to the Secretary of the Treasury, who is ultimately responsible for the final selection.

Of the four candidates drawn up by the Mint’s artists, both the CCAC and CFA preferred "AZ-01."

"The Committee narrowly prefers design 1, featuring a canyon-level view of the granaries above the Nankoweap Delta, over design 4, which features an aerial view of the canyon," the CCAC reported to Treasury Secretary Geithner. "Both were considered to be powerful images, with design 1 preferred for its more immediate, human-scaled view of the canyon."

"The Commission acknowledged the difficulty of distinguishing the subject from its previous depiction on the Arizona state quarter, a concern that may recur over the course of this new series," CFA Secretary Thomas E. Luebke said in a report to US Mint Director Ed Moy. "The Commission recommended alternative #1, due the depth of the perspective view, but suggested several modifications.

Noting that the foreground is given too much dominance in the composition, the Commission members recommended shifting the strong vertical alignment at the center of the coin to the right to emphasize the deep perspective toward the left side of the composition."

More than likely, this design will be what Americans will see next year.

The eleven year commemorative series will result in companion 56 circulating quarter-dollar and silver bullion coins with reverse designs emblematic of a selected site in each state, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories — Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands.

For more information on the fourth quarter-dollar release in 2010, or to view the other three coin design candidates, see Grand Canyon National Park Quarter.