1984 American Arts Commemorative Medallion - John Steinbeck

Coin Details

Auction Record

$1,850 MS66 01-06-2023 eBay

Description

The 1984 American Arts Gold Medallion featuring John Steinbeck is a one-troy-ounce gold piece honoring the California novelist whose compassionate portrayals of working-class Americans earned him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962. John Ernst Steinbeck (1902-1968) produced a body of work centered on the Salinas Valley and Monterey coast of California, including "The Grapes of Wrath" (1939), "Of Mice and Men" (1937), "East of Eden" (1952), and "Cannery Row" (1945) — novels that combined social realism with lyrical prose to illuminate the struggles of migrant workers, displaced farmers, and coastal laborers during the Depression and beyond. The obverse features Steinbeck's portrait, capturing the angular features and intense gaze familiar from photographs of the author in his mature years. The inscription JOHN STEINBECK and the date 1984 accompany the portrait. The reverse draws upon Steinbeck's California landscapes — the rolling agricultural valleys and Pacific coastline that formed the essential geography of his literary imagination. ONE TROY OUNCE OF GOLD appears around the border. As the final one-ounce issue in the American Arts series, the 1984 Steinbeck medallion closes a program that, despite its commercial shortcomings, produced a distinguished gallery of ten Americans representing the full breadth of the nation's creative achievement. Steinbeck's Nobel citation praised his "realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception." The author's concern for society's forgotten and marginalized members — expressed through characters like Tom Joad, George Milton, and Doc — established a moral voice in American fiction that continues to resonate.

Rarity Notes

Total mintage approximately 32,572 pieces — the lowest mintage of any one-ounce issue and the key date of the entire American Arts Gold Medallion program. Low mintage reflects the program's terminal sales decline in its final year.

Cross References

PCGS #20508; NGC #724009; Public Law 95-630; Swoger D1984-1