The 2022 Purple Heart Hall of Honor Silver Dollar

Some coins honor a president. Some honor a building. This one honors a wound.

The Purple Heart is the oldest military decoration still given to American service members, and it is the only one you cannot earn for bravery, skill, or rank. You earn it by bleeding — or by dying — in service to the country. Its roots run all the way back to 1782, when General George Washington created the Badge of Military Merit to reward ordinary Continental soldiers, not just officers. It was one of the first awards in the Western world that any enlisted person could win. Then it vanished for almost 150 years.

On February 22, 1932 — George Washington's 200th birthday — the medal came back as the Purple Heart, now carrying Washington's own profile. That date is stamped right on this coin: "1932." It's the moment a 1782 idea became the medal we know.

In 2006, a small museum opened in New Windsor, New York — the National Purple Heart Hall of Honor, the first and only institution in the nation devoted to a single military medal. Its job is to collect and preserve the stories of the roughly 1.8 million Americans estimated to have received the Purple Heart. To help fund it, Congress did something it does only rarely: it ordered a coin into existence.

The obverse — the heads side — puts the medal itself front and center. You see the Purple Heart, the heart-shaped award with Washington's profile inside it, ringed by inscriptions: "COMBAT WOUNDED & KILLED IN ACTION," "LIBERTY," "IN GOD WE TRUST," and the two dates that bracket the medal's story — "1932," when it was revived, and "2022," the year of the coin. It was designed by Heidi Wastweet of the Mint's Artistic Infusion Program and sculpted by Mint medallic artist Eric David Custer.

The reverse — the tails side — is the quieter, harder image. It shows a World War I nurse, in her steel helmet, bandaging a wounded soldier on a stretcher. No flag-waving, no eagle. Just the moment of care that the medal is really about. It was sculpted by Mint artist Craig A. Campbell.

The Mint also released a special colorized proof, with the medal's purple ribbon picked out in actual color — a rarity for a U.S. coin, since the Mint almost never adds color. That version was produced in a limited run for the program.

The thing that makes a modern commemorative interesting isn't age — it's the one-year window. Congress capped this program at the single year of 2022. After December, the dies were retired and the coin could never be struck again. That hard stop is the whole appeal: scarcity baked in by law, not by accident.

The numbers tell a clear story. The Mint was allowed to make up to 400,000 silver dollars, but reported selling only 62,803. Across all three denominations — the gold half eagle, the silver dollar, and the clad half dollar — just 102,681 coins were sold. For a commemorative, a low actual mintage against a high authorized cap is what collectors watch, because the real number, not the ceiling, is what survives.

Almost every example was sold as a collector piece in pristine condition — proof (a mirror-finish strike from polished dies, the term proof meaning the production method, not the quality grade) or uncirculated. Most carry the West Point "W" mint mark. The colorized proof, with its purple-tinted ribbon, was a smaller run within the program and is the variant most people picture when they think of this coin. Because these were never released into circulation, condition is the lever that moves value — a flawless, top-graded example is the one to chase.