American Eagle Five Dollar Gold 1986 to Date

The tenth-ounce Gold Eagle is the smallest coin of the American Gold Eagle program. Congress created the program with the Gold Bullion Coin Act of 1985, which President Reagan signed on December 17, 1985. The act added four gold coins to the coinage law, the $50, $25, $10 and $5, and set the $5 at 16.5 mm and 3.393 grams with one-tenth of a troy ounce of fine gold. It also required gold mined in the United States, reeded edges and the words Liberty, In God We Trust, United States of America and E Pluribus Unum, and it barred sales before October 1, 1986. Coin World dates the release of the gold bullion coins to October 20, 1986.

The act did not let the Treasury sell the coins at face value: it set the price at the market value of the gold plus the cost of making, marketing and distributing them, with a discount for bulk sales. Bullion Gold Eagles never go straight from the Mint to a collector: the Mint sells them only to its authorized purchasers, and the yearly bullion figures are counts of those sales. Collector versions, the proofs and for three years a burnished coin, are sold by the Mint directly, singly and in multi-coin sets.

• Bullion (every year since 1986): an ordinary uncirculated finish and no mint mark. Where the bullion coins were struck is not settled for the early years. PCGS and NGC list the 1986-2016 tenth-ounce bullion coins as Philadelphia coins, while Wikipedia's article on the West Point Mint says the 1986 coins came from West Point. For 2021 the Mint's own table, printed by Coin World, puts every size at West Point, which is why our 2021 bullion pages read "(W)". NGC's census also lists 2021 to 2026 bullion entries marked (W).
• Proof (1988-2008 and from 2010): mirrored fields and frosted designs, sold by the Mint. The tenth-ounce proof first appeared in 1988. The 1988-1993 proofs were struck at Philadelphia and carry a P; from 1994 they come from West Point with a W. There were no gold proofs in 2009.
• Burnished (2006-2008): the Mint's uncirculated collector coin, which NGC labels burnished, struck at West Point with a W and sold by the Mint. The Mint dropped the fractional sizes from this finish after 2008 and kept only the one-ounce coin.

• 1986: the first year, dated in Roman numerals, bullion only. The Mint's figure is 912,609.
• 1988-P proof: the first tenth-ounce proof, struck at Philadelphia; 143,881 by the Mint's figures.
• 1994-W proof: the first tenth-ounce proof from West Point; 62,849.
• 1999-W: bullion coins struck from unfinished proof dies, so they show a W without mirrored fields. NGC describes them as an accidental release. The Mint has no separate figure; the 1999 bullion total is 2,750,338.
• Burnished 2006-W, 2007-W and 2008-W: 20,643, 22,501 and 12,657 by the Mint's figures.
• 2009: bullion only (270,000). With metal in short supply and the law putting bullion first, the Mint issued no proof or uncirculated Gold Eagles that year, according to Wikipedia.
• 2016-2018 proofs: the Mint's reports give 38,889 for 2016, 20,974 for 2017 and 22,155 for 2018, counting the coins sold singly and in four-coin sets. Some references print only the single-coin sales, such as 11,158 for 2017.
• 2021: two reverses in one year. West Point struck 150,000 Type 1 bullion coins and 350,000 Type 2, by the Mint's table. There are proofs of both types, and on August 5, 2021 the Mint released a Designer Edition set pairing one tenth-ounce proof of each type, limited to 5,000 sets.
• 2026-W proof: dated 1776 ~ 2026 with a Liberty Bell privy mark bearing 250, for the nation's semiquincentennial. The Mint set a limit of 29,000 tenth-ounce proofs, counting those in four-coin sets.

Size. All four sizes of Gold Eagle share the same designs; the $5 coin is told apart by its 16.5 mm size and by the reverse, which states the weight of gold and the face value.

Date. Coins of 1986 to 1991 give the year in Roman numerals (MCMLXXXVI to MCMXCI); later coins use ordinary numerals.

Reverse, Type 1 (1986-2021). A male eagle carries an olive branch over a nest in which a female eagle sits with eaglets, Miley Busiek's design sculpted by Sherl Joseph Winter; their initials MB and JW appear on the coin.

Reverse, Type 2 (2021 on). A close portrait of an eagle's head by Jennie Norris, sculpted by Renata Gordon, signed JN and RG. Coins with this reverse also have the refreshed obverse, on which the Mint restored details of the Capitol, the sun's rays, the olive branch and the stars from a cast of the 1907 double eagle and moved Saint-Gaudens's initials.

Mint mark. A P or W below the date marks a proof, a burnished coin or a 1999-W unfinished-die coin. A bullion coin has none.

Finish. Proofs have mirror fields and frosted designs. Burnished coins and the 1999-W coins carry a W but lack the mirror. Bullion coins carry no letter.

• Composition: 91.67% gold, 3% silver, 5.33% copper (22 karat)
• Weight: 3.393 grams
• Gold content: 0.1 troy ounce
• Diameter: 16.5 mm
• Thickness: 1.19 mm (Wikipedia)
• Edge: reeded
• Face value: five dollars
• Designers: Augustus Saint-Gaudens (obverse, from the 1907 double eagle); Miley Busiek (reverse, 1986-2021 Type 1); Jennie Norris (reverse, 2021 Type 2 on)