2020 National Purple Heart Hall of Honor PR69DCAM

History

Public Law 116-247, the National Purple Heart Hall of Honor Commemorative Coin Act, was signed December 22, 2020, after two earlier attempts failed: H.R. 358 in the 114th Congress and H.R. 1683 in the 115th. The coin honors the Hall of Honor in New Windsor, New York, which opened November 10, 2006 to collect and preserve the stories of Purple Heart recipients from every branch and generation. The 2022 date was chosen for the 90th anniversary of the modern Purple Heart, first awarded May 28, 1932 to 136 World War I veterans, and roughly 1.8 million servicemen and servicewomen have received the decoration since. Designs for the three-coin program, a $5 gold piece, this silver dollar and a clad half dollar, were unveiled on Veterans Day 2021 with then-Acting Mint Director Ventris Gibson and Purple Heart recipients present.

Details

The proof dollar was struck at West Point and carries the W mintmark, in .999 fine silver. Congress set a ceiling of 400,000 pieces across all silver product options in the program, a figure that covers the standard proof, the colorized proof and the uncirculated dollar together rather than any single option. Actual sales fell well short of that ceiling. The colorized proof is a separate product with its own 25,000-piece production limit and a $95 issue price, and it is cataloged apart from the standard proof.

Features

The obverse carries the Purple Heart medal with its bust of George Washington, surrounded by five stars representing the branches of the military, and the inscriptions COMBAT WOUNDED & KILLED IN ACTION, LIBERTY, IN GOD WE TRUST and the dual dates 1932 and 2022. The colorized issue shares the same relief but adds purple shading around the Washington bust. No die varieties or doubled dies are recognized for the issue, and none would be expected from a modern West Point proof run. The practical identification problem is descriptive rather than numismatic, since colorized and standard proofs are frequently confused in listings, and PCGS CoinFacts text for the colorized coin refers to it as a 2022-P while the coin itself is mintmarked W.

Notable facts

• PCGS recognizes numerous separately numbered holder variants of the same coin, among them Admiral Tom Jurkowsky, First Day of Issue, First Day of Issue Paul C. Balan Flag, First Day of Issue Cleveland Wreath and First Day of Issue Cleveland Blue Eagle, all label distinctions rather than die or strike differences.
• Price spreads between those holder variants track label scarcity, not any difference in the coins themselves.
• The ordering window for the colorized proof opened March 24, 2022 and ran 30 days to April 25, with a one-per-household limit during the first 24 hours and shipping beginning July 14, 2022.
• This program produced the first United States Mint commemorative coins honoring Purple Heart recipients, a campaign led by the National Purple Heart Honor Mission.
• Essentially the entire mintage survives in original Mint packaging and PR70 DCAM is common, so value turns on grade-70 status, label and silver content rather than survival.