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Help ANS Honor America's 250th Anniversary
Help the American Numismatic Society to celebrate our Nation's 250th Birthday with a Beautiful Medal!
In 2026, the United States of America will celebrate the 250th Anniversary of its independence. This momentous occasion deserves to be commemorated in style!
The American Numismatic Society (ANS) is one of the Nation's oldest cultural institutions. The ANS is a 501(c)(3) organization that was established in 1858 to appreciate and educate the public about coins and medals.
The Society issued its first medal in 1866 to commemorate the nation's assassinated President, Abraham Lincoln. Since then, the ANS has issued around sixty medals, usually in small editions, but always designed by artists who were among the very best sculptors of their day. The ANS medals have ever been a class apart from the mass-produced wares designed for commerce by committee or focus group.
The ANS wants to continue this proud tradition by issuing a beautiful medal to celebrate the American Semiquincentennial, which is what numismatists call a 250th anniversary. As in the past, the medal will be of the highest artistic value and struck in a relatively small mintage.
But the 21st century is very different from the 19th and 20th centuries:
- Many art schools do not teach bas-relief sculpture anymore because other forms of artistic expression are more marketable today.
- Most organizations cannot afford to or do not want to pay the hefty price for a quality design and the production of dies used to strike the medals.
- Many mints that used to produce high-quality art medals have gone out of business, taking their institutional knowledge with them.
The challenges are therefore clear:
- To end up with a great medallic design, the ANS has to commission designs from several artists. Whether their designs are selected or not, these artists deserve to be paid for their efforts.
- Whether we strike one medal or 10,000, the production cost of the dies from which the medals are struck is the same.
- The cost of striking high-relief medals will be higher as we resurrect this nearly lost art.
We need your help to get this project off the ground! Our goal is to create a beautiful, classic art medal to commemorate our nation's anniversary. We believe this is possible, but we cannot do it alone. The ANS is asking you to help us bear the expense of this audacious project.
Our goal is to raise $40,000 by September 2025. The raised funds will help defray the fixed costs of:
- Commissioning designs from several artists.
- Producing dies in two different sizes.
- Marketing and managing project overhead.
This will help us keep the per-medal costs low, making them more affordable for everyone.
As the ANS is a 501(c)(3) organization, every dollar you donate is tax-deductible.
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