The Apollo 11 50th Anniversary commemorative coins were issued by the United States Mint in 2019 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first crewed landing on the Moon by Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. Consisting of a gold half eagle ($5 coin), two different sizes of silver dollars, and a copper-nickel clad half dollar, each of the four was issued in proof condition, with all but the larger silver dollar also issued in uncirculated. The gold coins were struck at the West Point Mint, the silver at the Philadelphia Mint and the base metal half dollars at the mints in Denver and San Francisco.
All four coins have the same design. The obverse depicts a bootprint on the lunar surface, based on a photograph taken by Aldrin. That design is by Maine sculptor Gary Cooper, with engraving by Joseph Menna of the Mint. The reverse, as mandated by Congress, depicts the visor and surrounding helmet of Aldrin's space suit, with Armstrong, the U.S. Flag and the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle in the reflection. This is based on a well-known photograph taken by Armstrong, and was created and engraved by Phebe Hemphill of the Mint. The depiction of Aldrin made him the seventh individual to appear on a U.S. coin who was alive at the time the coins were struck.
The Apollo 11 coins are curved, so that the obverse is concave and the reverse is convex. Prior to the release date of January 24, 2019, there was anticipation that some denominations might sell out, as had occurred with the previous U.S. issue of curved pieces, the 2014 National Baseball Hall of Fame coins. This did not prove to be the case, and none of the coins sold out before sales ended on December 27, 2019. It was nevertheless the most successful U.S. commemorative coin program since the Baseball Hall of Fame issue, with over 600,000 Apollo 11 coins sold. The larger silver dollar won the Coin of the Year Award for 2019-dated issues, and was voted Best Collectible Silver Coin at the 2023 Mint Directors Conference.
Background
In 1961, U.S. President John F. Kennedy challenged his nation to land an astronaut on the Moon by the end of the decade, with a safe return to Earth. The U.S. space agency, NASA, worked towards this goal incrementally, sending astronauts into space during Project Mercury and Project Gemini, leading up to the Apollo program. NASA achieved its goal with Apollo 11, which landed on the Moon on July 20, 1969. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the lunar surface while Michael Collins orbited the Moon. The mission returned to Earth on July 24, 1969, fulfilling Kennedy's challenge.
About an hour and a half after Armstrong first set foot on the lunar surface, Aldrin performed the Boot Print Soil Mechanics Experiment. He photographed an undisturbed area of the surface, then made two bootprints and photographed them. Those two bootprints were not disturbed by the astronauts' subsequent activity, and are visible in photographs taken from the Lunar Module Eagle prior to liftoff. About 13 minutes following the taking of the bootprint photographs, after Armstrong had collected a bulk sample of lunar regolith from the surface, Aldrin was supposed to photograph the site the material had been taken from. Instead, he offered the camera to Armstrong, perhaps feeling that as Armstrong had taken the sample, he could make better use of the camera. Armstrong took eight photographs before Aldrin resumed use of the camera; the eighth has been deemed "one of the most famous photos in history: a portrait of Aldrin, his gold-plated sun visor reflecting the photographer and the Lunar Module, the flag, and the moon’s horizon against an unimaginably black sky."
Proposal and legislation The Apollo 11 coins were the brainchild of Mike Olson, a member of the federal Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee (CCAC) from Iowa, who thought of it in February 2014, several months before his term on the committee ended. He had recently rewatched the film Apollo 13, and felt there should be a coin issue in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the Moon. The CCAC was preparing its annual report and he persuaded his colleagues to include a recommendation for Apollo 11 coinage. Olson had left the committee by the time the CCAC prepared its annual report, but the chair, Gary Marks, took up the cause and got it included.
In January 2015, Olson discussed his proposal with Iowa Representative Rod Blum, who referred the matter to Florida's Bill Posey, whose district included the Kennedy Space Center, and who as a young man had worked in the Apollo program. Posey obtained a bipartisan group of cosponsors and introduced legislation in June 2015. Legislation to mark the 25th anniversary of the Moon landing with coins had been introduced into Congress in 1993 but had failed, as had a bill in 2007 for the 50th anniversary of NASA. The Mint had three times previously honored the Moon landings on coins, with the reverses of the Eisenhower dollar (1971) and Susan B. Anthony dollar (1979), (both showing the Apollo 11 mission patch), and with the 2002 Ohio entry in the State Quarters series, depicting an Apollo astronaut. The 2015 bill was referred to the House Committee on Financial Services, where it sat; the website GovTrack.us gave it a 13 percent chance of enactment.
Through 2016, advocates attempted to boost support for the bill, which by November had 298 cosponsors, enough to get a floor vote during the lame-duck session of Congress. Olson continued his lobbying, as did the Astronauts Memorial Foundation and Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, each designated to receive some of the surcharges on the coins. Despite the support of Aldrin and Collins, the surviving Apollo 11 astronauts, the Senate version of the bill had only 11 cosponsors, far fewer than the 67 needed for a vote. If there was no successful vote, the bill would die at the end of the 114th Congress.
On December 5, the last day of the House session, the bill was called up for debate by Congressman Posey, who then addressed the House in support of the bill, recounting the history of Apollo 11. Nydia M. Velázquez of New York and Frederica S. Wilson of Florida spoke of the hundreds of thousands of workers who had made Apollo possible, and applauded the inclusion of the Scholarship Foundation as a beneficiary, hoping the coins would have a legacy of young people entering the sciences. Posey spoke again briefly, and the bill passed without opposition.
A final push by proponents resulted in 70 Senate cosponsors, three more than needed. Arkansas Senator John Boozman brought the bill to the Senate floor on December 9, and it passed without opposition. The bill became Public Law 114–282 with the signature of President Barack Obama on December 16, 2016, one of the final bills he signed as president.
The act required that the coins be issued "in recognition of the 50th anniversary of the first crewed landing on the Moon". They were required to have a curved shape similar to the 2014 National Baseball Hall of Fame commemoratives. These coins, with the concave design for the obverse resembling a baseball glove, had been enormously popular. There were to be up to 50,000 Apollo 11 $5 gold pieces, or half eagles, 400,000 regular-sized silver dollars, 750,000 clad half dollars, and 100,000 additional silver dollars containing five troy ounces of silver and measuring three inches in diameter. All coins would have the same design, and would be available in uncirculated and in proof condition, except the five-ounce silver dollar, which would be in proof only. The design for the concave obverse could be selected through a design competition. A surcharge of $35 on the gold pieces, $50 on the five-ounce silver dollar, $10 on the smaller silver dollar and $5 on the half dollar would be collected. Once the Mint recouped its costs, half the remainder of the money would be distributed to the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum (NASM) for its "Destination: Moon" exhibit, one quarter to the Astronauts Memorial Foundation and one quarter to the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation. The coins could only be issued during 2019. Apollo 11 50th Anniversary Commemorative Coin Act
Design Selection
From May 1 to June 29, 2017, the Mint accepted submissions for the coins' obverse design. Those whose concepts made the first cut would be notified by July 31, with revised submissions to be made by September 8. The obverse was not to include the image of any living person, including an astronaut, and was to be "emblematic of the United States space program leading up to the first crewed Moon landing". A total of 119 proposals were submitted, and a jury consisting of three members each of the Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) and the CCAC winnowed them down to 18 finalists.
When the CCAC met on October 18, 2017, members were unenthusiastic, with some predicting a sales disaster and wanting to discard all the designs, but the chair, Mary N. Lannin said that one of them must be selected. The Fine Arts Commission met the following day; its members expressed some enthusiasm about the proposed designs. The jury members met and viewed the designs on October 20.
From the finalists, a design by Maine sculptor and medalist Gary Cooper was selected, depicting the bootprint of an astronaut on the Moon. Cooper had a longtime interest in coinage, and had submitted an unsuccessful entry in the 1998 Sacagawea dollar design competition, as well as an entry, also unsuccessful, for Maine's coin in the State Quarters series. The CFA had commented on the bootprint design, saying that it "may seem overly familiar". During the second round of the Apollo 11 competition, Mint officials had him submit modified versions of his entry, altering the position of elements of the design. It was one of these alternatives that won the competition. For his efforts, Cooper was paid a total of $5,500, with $500 an award for participation in the second round and the remainder the prize for winning. Cooper's concept was adapted for die production by Mint Sculptor-Engraver (now Chief Engraver) Joseph F. Menna.
Artists at the Mint produced three designs for the reverse, and in June 2017, both CFA and CCAC agreed on one of them. That design was by U.S. Mint Sculptor-Engraver Phebe Hemphill, who also engraved her side of the coin. The two winning designs were unveiled on October 11, 2018, at the NASM in Washington, DC, in the presence of dignitaries such as Mint Director David J. Ryder and Apollo 7 astronaut Walt Cunningham. At the unveiling, Ryder stated the five-ounce silver dollars, once placed on sale, could sell out in ten minutes.
Description
The shared obverse for the coins, created by Cooper, adapts the well-known photograph of an astronaut's bootprint, taken by Aldrin with a Hasselblad film camera, symbolizing the first step on the Moon. Cooper stated, "I recall seeing those first footprints, and it made so many people feel like that was their own footprint. I’ve never seen anything like that since." He noted that the original photograph had darkness in the recesses of the bootprint, forcing him to be creative. Along the rim are the words , and , separated by depicted phases of the Moon progressing toward full as NASA's programs advance towards the Moon landing. is at the bottom, with above and to each side, the date 2019 (to left) and to the right. The initials of Cooper and Menna, and the mint mark of the facility where the coin was struck also appear on the obverse.