2010 Hot Springs National Park Silver Coin Recommendations

As companions to next year’s America the Beautiful Quarters, the United States Mint will strike "duplicate" silver bullion versions in .999 fine silver that are three inches in diameter and weigh five ounces.

First up for release is the Arkansas 2010 Hot Springs National Park Quarter. But reverse designs for all of the 2010 coins honoring national parks and national sites have already been created and submitted by the US Mint for review.

As part of the design selection process, four coin design candidates for Hot Springs National Park were provided to two organization for input. The first of these is a relatively new body called the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee (CCAC), which was authorized by Congress in 2003 and consists of eleven members. The second group to provides input on coin design is the United States Commission of Fine Arts (CFA), which consists of seven members and has been around since 1910.

Each organization preferred a differing design, as explained below. One of their recommended designs is likely to be featured on the 2010 Hot Springs National Park Silver Bullion Coin (as well as the quarter, of course).

Hot Springs National Park Design Candidate AR-02 - Click to Enlarge

Hot Springs National Park Design Candidate AR-04 - Click to Enlarge

The CCAC strongly favored design candidate "AR-04" which focuses on the fountain in front of the Hot Springs National Park’s headquarters building.

"The Committee strongly recommends design 4, which shows a focused view of the public fountain in front of the site’s headquarters building," the CCAC reported to Treasury Secretary Geithner. "Members appreciated the design’s clear imagery, emphasis on water, and incorporation of natural landscape."

The CFA chose option number two, or "AR-02," which also shows the fountain in front of the main building along with the doorway into that building.

"The Commission members commented favorably on the simplicity of this design but questioned the quality of the drawings presented, and recommended that the small National Park Service sign beside the doorway be eliminated from the design due to its illegibility at the scale of a coin," CFA Secretary Thomas E. Luebke said in a report to US Mint Director Ed Moy.

The final call is up to the Secretary of the Treasury, as outline in the America’s Beautiful National Parks Quarter Dollar Coin Act of 2008.

For a perspective of the silver bullion coin size, each will have a diameters of twice the size of early US silver dollars, like the Morgans, and nearly double that of today’s American Eagle Silver, which is 1.598 inches in diameter and includes one ounce of silver. The America the Beautiful Silver Bullion Coins will also include edge-incused inscriptions of weight and fineness.

America the Beautiful Quarters will feature up to five new designs each year beginning in 2010 and lasting to 2021. The eleven year 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 first quarter-dollar release to include the two other non recommended designs, see Hot Springs National Park Quarter.