Seven of the 12 Proof half-ounce, .9167 fine gold 2000-W pieces bearing the Sacagawea dollar designs and carried aboard the space shuttle Columbia in July 1999 are scheduled to be sold at public auction Sept. 12 by Stack’s Bowers Galleries on behalf of the United States Mint.

Also slated to be sold in the same dedicated Mint auction is the first of the 7,500 2025-W half-ounce .9999 fine gold Sacagawea dollars struck at the West Point Mint to mark the series’ 25th anniversary.

The 25th anniversary coins sold out within minutes of their public offering in July, priced at $2,200 each.

The five Proof 2000-W Sacagawea gold dollars not part of the Sept. 12 Stack’s Bowers Galleries auction will be permanently archived in the U.S. Mint’s heritage assets holdings.

U.S. Mint officials have not disclosed why the bureau is selling seven of the gold pieces from the space flight. The overall 12 pieces have been secured in a vault at the Fort Knox Gold Bullion Depository in Kentucky for more than two decades.

The seven Proof 2000-W gold dollars won’t be considered to hold legal tender status until the purchase price and ancillary costs are paid plus an added $1 to compensate the Mint for monetization of the gold pieces.

2000-W gold Proofs

Under the tenure of Philip N. Diehl as 35th director of the United States Mint, the West Point struck 39 22-karat (.9167 fine) gold pieces on half-ounce planchets normally reserved for producing the American Eagle $25 gold bullion coins.

The 1999 production, dated 2000 on the coins, was executed in preparation for a planned Proof Sacagawea gold dollar product to be released in conjunction with the circulating Sacagawea manganese brass dollar.

The 12 best strikes from among the 39 Proof coins were reserved to be placed aboard the Columbia space shuttle mission, in celebration of the first space shuttle flight to be commanded by a woman, USAF Col. (ret.) Eileen Collins; the remaining 27 strikes were melted.

Planned subsequent gold piece output was suspended amid concerns that the U.S. Mint did not have legal authority to strike the Sacagawea dollar in gold, although bureau officials concluded otherwise (see https://www.coinworld.com/news/us-coins/sacagawea-proof-gold-dollar-production-stopped.html)

In 2007, the 38th Mint director, Edmund C. Moy, arranged for public display of the 12 space-flown strikes at the American Numismatic Association’s World’s Fair of Money in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

These early production gold pieces were struck with the 12 tail feathers reverse design, now referred to as a pattern design, since changes were made for later full production for circulation. The gold strikes share the design of the coveted “Cheerios” variety of the Sacagawea dollar. This special reverse design was used on only the very first coins struck in the series and was quickly modified to a less detailed design giving the appearance of 13 tail feathers, shortly after production began.

Read about the 1999 space mission at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-93.

Each of the eight gold pieces in the Sept. 12 auction is to be accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by Acting U.S. Mint Director Kristie McNally.

As of the morning of Aug. 27, the seven Proof 2000-W Sacagawea gold dollars and the 2025-W coin to be auctioned were still in the physical custody of the U.S. Mint, with each piece anticipated to be imaged, to satisfy a request by Coin World to photograph all of the gold pieces to be auctioned.

By Aug. 28, the coins were to be delivered to Stack’s Bowers Galleries to catalog for the Sept. 12 sale after they are sent to Professional Coin Grading Service for authentication, grading and encapsulation.

For more information on the Stack’s Bowers Galleries sale of the eight Sacagawea gold dollar pieces, contact the firm by telephone at 800-458-4646, or email info@stacksbowers.com.

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