Braille Commemorative on Sale, Uncirculated Lincoln Sold Out

Today, the 2009 Louis Braille Commemorative Coin went on sale at the United States Mint. A ceremony to mark the launch was also held at the headquarters of the National Federation of the Blind in Baltimore, Maryland.

Three separate ordering options are available: the proof coin, the uncirculated coin, and the uncirculated coin in a special easy open capsule to accommodate anyone wishing to read the Braille characters on the reverse of the coin.

The US Mint has placed an ordering limit of 50 units each per household. This compares to an ordering limit of 100 per option, which had been set for the Lincoln Commemorative. The total authorized maximum mintage for the Braille Commemorative is 400,000 coins across all product options.

The launch of the Braille Commemorative coin seems to be generating much more mainstream attention than the launch of the prior Lincoln Commemorative. Dave Harper mentions that the story was covered on CBS Radio and I saw a story online from CNN. I commented before about the lack of mainstream attention for the Lincoln Commemorative coin launch, which seemed to have been overshadowed by the launch of the newly designed cent on the same day. It will be interesting to see if this added exposure translates into higher sales for the Braille coin.

In my opinion, I don't think the Louis Braille Commemorative will achieve a sell out, although it is definitely one of the most unique commemorative coin offerings in recent memory.

Meanwhile, the uncirculated version of the 2009 Abraham Lincoln Commemorative coin has now officially sold out. The coin had been put on "waiting list status" on Tuesday. The proof version of the coin remains available for sale, but likely not for long.

Numismaster reported the latest sales figrues for the Lincoln Commemorative. Proof coin sales are 312,075 and uncirculated coin sales are 135,793. This puts the total across both options at 447,868. This leaves only 2,132 individual coins left available for sale.

Update: On Friday, the 2009 Lincoln Proof Commemorative moved into "waiting list status."