The 2011 Medal of Honor $5 Gold Coin

The Medal of Honor is the only U.S. military decoration that a President of the United States awards in the name of Congress. It is given for valor in combat that goes "above and beyond the call of duty" — and it is so rarely earned that most recipients are honored after they have died.

That medal is the oldest combat award the country still gives. The Navy version was authorized in December 1861, in the dark first winter of the Civil War; the Army's followed in July 1862. The very first medals went to Union soldiers who hijacked a Confederate locomotive in the 1862 raid remembered as the Great Locomotive Chase. From that moment to today, the medal has been an unbroken thread through every American war.

In 2009, Congress decided that thread deserved a coin. The Medal of Honor Commemorative Coin Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-91) ordered up two coins for the 2011 calendar year — a silver dollar and this small $5 gold piece. Their purpose was not to circulate. They were sold to raise money, with a surcharge on every coin going to the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation to fund its education, scholarship, and outreach work.

The obverse — the heads side — does something quietly clever. Instead of inventing a new image, it shows the original medal: the Navy's design as authorized by Congress in 1861, the first version of the decoration ever struck. You are looking at a coin of a medal, the country's newest gold piece carrying its oldest award.

The reverse — the tails side — reaches for myth. It shows Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom and defensive war, standing with a shield in one hand and the Union flag in the other, flanked by a Civil War-era field cannon and its wheel. Minerva was the central figure on both the original Army and Navy medals, so the coin links the modern decoration back to its 1860s roots in a single image.

The obverse was designed by U.S. Mint Sculptor-Engraver Joseph Menna. The reverse came from Artistic Infusion Program designer Joel Iskowitz and was sculpted by Mint Sculptor-Engraver Michael Gaudioso. By law, the program's designs were meant to represent all three medal forms — Army, Navy, and Air Force — and to honor recipients past and present.

Congress allowed up to 100,000 of these gold coins. Collectors bought a small fraction of that. Final sales settled at roughly 18,000 proofs and only about 8,200 uncirculated pieces — figures that put both versions among the lowest-mintage U.S. gold commemoratives of the modern era. The uncirculated coin, in particular, is genuinely scarce: a commemorative most people have never heard of, struck in numbers a single popular coin can dwarf.

Two versions exist, and the mint mark tells them apart. The proof — frosted devices against mirror-like fields — was struck at West Point and carries a W. The uncirculated, or "burnished," version was struck at Philadelphia and carries a P. (A proof is a specially polished collector strike; an uncirculated commemorative is struck once for collectors but without the proof's mirror finish.) Because so few uncirculated coins were made, that P is the one savvy collectors chase.

There are no famous die varieties or error rarities to hunt here — this is a one-year, two-mint program. The scarcity comes from the original low sales, not from any quirk of striking. For a coin its size, that combination of small gold content and small surviving population is what gives it weight beyond its bullion.