What Was the First W-Mint Coin?

The United States Mint has been striking many coins at the West Point Mint with the “W” mint mark in recent years. Among these W mint mark coins are the circulating 2019-W and 2020-W Quarters, which garnered a lot of attention in the press and even inspired the popular PCGS Quarter Quest. But as the catalog of W mint mark coinage grows larger and larger, many collectors are left to wonder what that first W mint mark coin was.

Collectors must look back to the 1980s to zero in on that first W mint mark coin, which was the 1984-W $10 Olympic gold coin. The 1984 $10 gold commemorative became the first legal tender gold coin produced by the United States Mint since 1933 and represented a bold move forward for the young Modern U.S. Commemorative Coin program, which launched in 1982 following the mint’s 28-year hiatus on striking commemoratives.

The 1984-W $10 Olympic commemorative gold coin saw a mintage of 75,886 business strikes and 381,085 proofs – an outstanding output, especially considering the relatively small productions of gold commemoratives today. But when the first $10 Olympic gold coins were struck at what was then the West Point Bullion Depository on September 13, 1983, the public was especially hungry for new United States gold coinage, long absent from the mint’s production lineup.

There was a total of five purchase options for the 1984 $10 Olympic gold, with the Philadelphia, Denver, San Francisco, and West Point Mints all issuing proof versions and the West Point kicking in an additional fifth variant with its uncirculated finish offering. Regular-issue prices were $339 for the business strikes, while proofs sold for $352.

While the 1984 $10 Olympic commemorative was the first United States coin to bear the “W” mint mark, it was not the first to be struck at West Point. For that, we must turn the clocks back yet another decade further to 1974, when the West Point Mint began striking Lincoln Cents without a mintmark to supplement production of the one-cent coin for the Philadelphia Mint.

There is absolutely no known die diagnostic that conclusively distinguishes 1974 Philadelphia Lincoln Cents apart from those made at the West Point Mint. However, West Point continued striking Lincoln Cents without a “W” mint mark until 1986 while also producing Washington Quarters sans mint mark from 1977 through 1979.

As the 1980s rolled on, West Point charted more releases with W mint marks beyond the 1984 $10 Olympic gold coin, including the 1986-W Statue of Liberty Centennial $5 gold coin, 1987-W U.S. Constitution Bicentennial $5 gold coin, 1988-W Seoul Olympiad $5 gold coin, and 1989-W Congress Bicentennial $5 gold coin. In 1996, the West Point Mint struck 1,457,000 mint-marked specimens of the 10 cent coin for inclusion in United States Mint Uncirculated Sets as a free bonus marking the 50th anniversary of the Roosevelt Dime.

The 1996-W Roosevelt Dime was a novelty at the time, serving as the first issue from a circulating series to carry a W mint mark. But with the benefit of retrospection, it’s now accurate to posit that the 1996-W Roosevelt Dime serves as a forerunner to the many circulating W-minted coins that were to come in the 21st century.

Sources

• Bowers, Q. David. A Guide Book of Lincoln Cents. Whitman Publishing, 2008.
• Breen, Walter. Walter Breen’s Complete Encyclopedia of US and Colonial Coins. Doubleday, 1988.
• Gilkes, Paul. “U.S. Mint Strikes West Point Quarters for Circulation.” Coin World. April 2, 2019. Accessed June 2, 2021.