Owner Comments:
The high jump has been contested at every modern summer Olympic Games. Most of the coins from the 1996 Olympic commemorative series depicted sports, such as swimming or cycling, that covered several disciplines or accounted for a number of contested events. Just 82 medals have been awarded to men and 58 to women for high jump in all modern Olympic Games since the first in 1896. There are other jumping events held at the Games, including the long jump, the triple jump, and the pole vault, all of which have also been contested at every Olympics. One reason that this sport may have been chosen for a commemorative was the wonderful design created by artist Calvin Massey for the coin. Seventy years old at the time his design was selected, Massey had created hundreds of medallic designs, including some he made while working as a staff member of the Franklin Mint. He was well known for his portrayal of African-American women in bas-relief and painting. The coin’s obverse shows an African-American female athlete in mid-execution of the “Fosbury Flop,” a high-jumping technique popularized by Dick Fosbury in the 1968 Olympics. The wonderful aspect of the composition is that, while jumping, the athlete arches her back as her legs dangle on the opposite side of the bar, her body forming an arch that matches the roundness of the coin. The word LIBERTY is spelled out above her, matching her shape, while USA and the Olympic rings are below. The masterful design, alas, could not rescue the coin from suffering the same fate as the other 1996 Olympic commemoratives. Far too many coins were issued, and collector apathy took over. To spur sales, Congress lowered the authorized mintage from 1,000,000 coins to 500,000, but this had little effect. As with virtually all commemorative issues, the Proof version struck at the San Francisco Mint proved much more popular than the Uncirculated variety. The Proof version totaled 124,502 sales, while the Denver Mint’s Uncirculated version only sold 15,697, the second-lowest mintage of any silver commemorative dollar. Today, its low mintage and popular design combine to make the 1996-D Olympic High Jump dollar the most valuable of all the Uncirculated dollars in the series.
Garrett, Jeff; Schechter, Scott. 100 Greatest US Modern Coins (Kindle Locations 3022-3026). Ingram Distribution. Kindle Edition.