Collectible American Palladium Eagles
As the most recent addition to the American Eagle bullion coin program, the American Palladium Eagles were only introduced to the market in 2017. That first year, a total of 15,000 brilliant uncirculated bullion coins were released by the US Mint. Since then, a regular bullion version of the coins was only released once more, just this year in 2021 (mintage of 8,700 coins). However, there have been several more releases of collectible American Palladium Eagles that were primarily meant to appeal to coin collectors.
Of course, investors should primarily focus on buying the bullion version of precious metal coins as these are generally available for the lowest premiums above the spot price of the metal. Since the various versions of collectible American Palladium Eagles that have been released over the years were minted in similar and sometimes even higher numbers than the regular brilliant uncirculated coins, price differences between the different types are generally not as high as could be assumed though.
One type of collectible American Palladium Eagles are proof coins. These were issued in the years 2018, 2019 and 2021. The proof coins that were released in 2019 actually had a reverse proof finish and with 30,000 such coins minted (by far the highest mintage of any type of Palladium Eagles), these coins should be the easiest and possibly also cheapest to obtain in the secondary market.
Even the combined mintage numbers of the regular proof coins that were minted in 2018 (mintage of 15,000 coins) and 2021 (mintage of 12,000 coins) are much lower than the number of minted reverse proof coins, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that collectors will generally have to pay much higher premiums for the regular proof Palladium Eagles if they are so lucky to have the chance to buy them on the secondary market.
collectible American Palladium Eagles such as these 2021 proof coins come packaged in a special presentation case with a Certificate of Authenticity
Finally, there was one more release of collectible American Palladium Eagles in the year 2020. That’s when a limited mintage of 10,000 Palladium Eagles were produced with a burnished finish which was achieved by having the coin blanks polished before striking. That gave the finished burnished coins a matte and less shiny appearance.
All different collectible versions of the American Palladium Eagles were produced by the West Point branch of the US Mint. The W mint mark appears prominently on the obverse side of all these coins just underneath the words “In God we trust”. Since brilliant uncirculated Palladium Eagles are never mintmarked on the other hand, spotting that W mint mark on the obverse side of the coins is the easiest way for inexperienced precious metal investors to ascertain whether a particular Palladium Eagle coin falls into the collectible category or not.
