2010 Yellowstone National Park Silver Coin Recommendations

The Yellowstone National Park Quarter will be the second quarter-dollar issued next year as a part of the America the Beautiful Quarters Program. Accompanying it to help celebrate the historic park in Wyoming will be a silver coin with a duplicate design, but much larger in size.

The 2010 Yellowstone National Park Silver Bullion Coin will be struck in five ounces of .999 fine silver and have a three inch diameter. That is double the size of early US silver coins, like the Peace Dollars, and nearly twice that of today’s one-ounce American Eagle Silver, which is 1.598 inches in diameter.

Coin designs have already been created for the 2010 quarters, and therefore also for the silver bullion versions. Three designs were created by the United States Mint that are emblematic of Yellowstone National Park.

As a part of the minting process, these candidates were submitted to the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee (CCAC) and the United States Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) for review.

The CCAC selected the design candidate denoted as "WY-01."

"The Committee strongly prefers design 1, showing Old Faithful geyser with bison in the foreground and background," the CCAC reported to Treasury Secretary Geithner who is ultimately responsible for selecting the final design. "Members felt that design 1 would work well on a small coin, and that the depiction of animal life enhanced the design."

The CFA discarded all three.

The Commission rejected all of the designs presented for their poor quality. The Commission members supported the idea of depicting Old Faithful, but suggested consideration of additional source material, such as the paintings of Thomas Moran," CFA Secretary Thomas E. Luebke said in a report to US Mint Director Ed Moy.

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.

The silver bullion coins will be unique not only in size, but they will also include edge-incused inscriptions of weight and fineness.

For more information on the second quarter-dollar release in 2010, or to view the other two coin design candidates, see Yellowstone National Park Quarter.