The 2012 Infantry Soldier Silver Dollar

The Infantry has a two-word motto, and it is not a slogan a marketing team invented. Follow Me. It is what an officer is expected to say with his body before he says it with his mouth — go first, up the hill, into the fire, and trust that the line comes with you. The 2012 Infantry Soldier silver dollar is that idea turned into metal.

The coin exists because of a building. In 2008 Congress passed the National Infantry Museum and Soldier Center Commemorative Coin Act (Public Law 110-357), signed into law on October 8 of that year. The act ordered the Treasury to strike a silver dollar honoring the legacy of the U.S. Army Infantry — and, just as importantly, to help fund the National Infantry Museum at Fort Benning, Georgia. Each coin sold carried a $10 surcharge earmarked for the National Infantry Foundation, to build an endowment for the museum's upkeep.

That is the quiet machinery behind most modern U.S. commemoratives: a coin is also a fundraiser. You buy a dollar of silver; ten dollars of your purchase goes to a cause Congress chose. The Infantry dollar's cause was the place that keeps the branch's history — and its dead — from being forgotten.

The obverse — the heads side — was designed by the artist Joel Iskowitz and sculpted by U.S. Mint engraver Michael Gaudioso. It shows a modern infantryman on broken, rocky ground, charging forward with one arm raised behind him, beckoning. There is no general on a horse, no allegorical Liberty in flowing robes. It is a working soldier in the act of leading — the literal posture of Follow Me. Around him run the usual obligatory inscriptions: LIBERTY, IN GOD WE TRUST, the date 2012, and the W mint mark.

The reverse — the tails side — is by Mint sculptor-engraver Ronald D. Sanders, and it is almost defiantly simple: a pair of crossed rifles. That is the branch insignia of the Infantry, the small brass device an infantryman wears on his collar. Wrapped around it are UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ONE DOLLAR, and E PLURIBUS UNUM — "out of many, one," fitting for a branch that turns individuals into a line.

The designs got a soldier's debut. The Mint and the National Infantry Foundation unveiled them on October 27, 2011, at Fort Benning's historic Doughboy Stadium, with Vietnam War Medal of Honor recipients present. Marv Levy, the former Buffalo Bills coach, used a prototype of the silver dollar for the pre-game coin toss. The Infantry's coin started its life at midfield, in front of soldiers.

This is a one-year, one-mint coin: every genuine Infantry Soldier dollar is dated 2012 and struck at West Point, so the W mint mark is on all of them. That keeps the collecting story simple — there are no rare branch mints or date runs to chase.

What there is, instead, is a split between two finishes. The Mint sold a proof — struck on polished blanks with mirrored fields and frosted devices, the dressed-up collector version — and an uncirculated (often called "Burlington" or BU) finish, with the ordinary satin look of a struck coin. The proof sold far better, with 161,151 struck; the uncirculated is the scarcer of the pair at 44,348. Both numbers sit well under the 350,000 the law allowed, which is the norm for modern commemoratives — Congress authorizes a ceiling, and the public buys what it buys.

Because nearly every survivor was bought by a collector and tucked away, the Infantry dollar is common in high grade — a coin graded 69 or 70 (the top of the 70-point Sheldon scale) is not hard to find. The value lives mostly in the silver and the story, not in scarcity. For most owners that is exactly the point: it is an affordable, handsome piece of a real institution's history, with about three-quarters of an ounce of silver inside.