2014 Baseball Hall of Fame $5 Gold: The First Coin That Curved

For 222 years, every coin the United States made was flat. Then a baseball glove changed that.

In 1939, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum opened its doors in Cooperstown, New York — a small town that had wrapped itself in the legend that baseball was invented there. By 2014, the Hall was turning 75, and Congress marked the anniversary the way it often marks anniversaries: with a commemorative coin. A commemorative is a coin authorized for a specific occasion, sold to the public at a premium rather than spent at face value, with part of the price flowing to a cause.

But this one came with an idea no one at the Mint had ever pulled off. The National Baseball Hall of Fame Commemorative Coin Act, signed into law on August 3, 2012, called for a coin that would actually look like a baseball — curved, not flat. The Mint's engineers had to figure out how to strike a domed coin without cracking the metal or smearing the design. They cracked it. The result was the first curved coin in US history.

The $5 gold half eagle is the smallest and scarcest of the three coins in that program. ("Half eagle" is the historic American name for the five-dollar gold piece — the eagle was the ten-dollar coin, so half of one is five dollars.) Its entire run sold out on the first day.

The shape is the point, so the Mint designed for it. The obverse — the heads side — is concave, cupped inward, and it carries a worn, open baseball glove, as if the coin itself were waiting for a throw. Curl your hand around it and the metaphor lands: the coin fits the palm the way a ball fits a mitt. The reverse — the tails side — bulges outward and shows a baseball, stitches and all, the convex face echoing the real thing.

The glove came from an open contest, not a staff artist. From April 11 to May 11, 2013, the Mint ran a nationwide design competition and received 178 submissions. The winner was Cassie McFarland, a graphic artist from San Luis Obispo, California, who earned $5,000 for the design. Veteran US Mint sculptor-engraver Don Everhart adapted her glove for the curved surface and sculpted the baseball on the reverse.

Look closely at the glove's pocket and you'll find the inscriptions arranged in a ring: LIBERTY across the top, IN GOD WE TRUST below, and the date, 2014, beneath that. The "W" mint mark on the obverse marks the coin as a product of the West Point Mint in New York, where the Mint strikes most of its gold.

This is a modern coin, so condition is the whole game. The Mint sold it in two finishes: a proof, struck with polished dies on polished blanks for a mirror background and frosted devices, and an uncirculated (or "burnished") strike with a satin finish. Proofs were the more popular choice — the reported figures run to 32,427 proof against 17,677 uncirculated — which makes the uncirculated coin the scarcer of the two.

Because every example was sold straight from the Mint and tucked into a presentation case, survivors tend to grade high. The premium lives at the very top: a proof certified PR70 Deep Cameo, or an uncirculated piece at MS70 — a flawless grade, the maximum on the 70-point scale — commands far more than a coin a point or two down. Coins certified "First Strike" or "Early Releases" (graded from the earliest shipments) and those in special labels carry their own collector following.

One quiet appeal: a half eagle this small carries about a quarter ounce of gold, so even a worn-down example never falls far below the value of its metal. The curve is the rarity, though — there is no other denomination, no other year. The 2014-W gold coin is the only $5 baseball the Mint will ever make.