I can imagine that numerous cardiac events were occurring in the numismatic community on March 27. My heart certainly stopped beating — metaphorically, anyway — while waiting for the U.S. Mint website pages to load as I completed the shopping process.

It’d been a while since I’d bought anything direct from the U.S. Mint, I’ll admit — since the local coin club I am in pools orders together, I haven’t needed to. So the morning of the 27th I logged in early, to make sure I knew my password and didn’t have to reset it when it came time to place my order. 

About 11 minutes before the coins went on sale, I joined the waiting room and right away notched a good position, apparently, because soon after noon, the wait time showed up as 5 minutes. Only five minutes feels like forever when you are on the Mint’s website on a release date.

The process to order — adding items to the cart, updating quantities, etc. — came together quickly once those five minutes had elapsed, but in the checkout process I had to update my credit card, which slowed the process considerably.

For fun, while waiting for the initial site visit to pan out, I opened another browser and loaded the waiting room URL, which would have placed me 45 minutes behind the other order. No good! 

The process slowed to a glacial pace at that point, with the spinning web icon a hypnotic mirage — each minute that passed, I became certain that I had somehow wrenched the process, that the bottom was going to drop out just like a backdoor breaking ball diving out of the strike zone at the last split second.

But finally — finally! — the “complete your order” page appeared, and in that split second (the same time a batter has to judge whether to swing at a pitch) I clicked the button and closed the deal. 

It appears the gold coins will arrive some time in July. With any luck, they will arrive during the All Star break, a time to celebrate the best of baseball’s talent on a national stage. 

The coins, after all, reflect the highest of U.S. minting talent, and have placed the institution on a national platform that it rarely enjoys.