With the First Spouse Gold Coin series now approaching the end of its third year of release, the mintages for coins released so far present some interesting trends.

The table below presents the mintage figures for the First Spouse Gold coins release so far. The coins from Martha Washington to Andrew Jackson’s Liberty are no longer available for sale directly from the US Mint. The coins from Martin Van Buren’s Liberty onward remain available for sale so mintages will continue to rise.

The coin series began with much fanfare, selling out the first three issues completely. Following the initial buzz, sales declined and fell into a new range. The releases for 2008 all have mintages within the 4,000 range for uncirculated coins and 7,000 range for proof coins.

As customary with US Mint product releases, the proof version of each coin has outsold the uncirculated version. The margin is not as wide as experienced for some recent commemorative coins where the proof version has sold more than double the uncirculated version.

Will the low mintages of some coins lead to higher secondary market prices? It has been a question on the minds of collectors of the series for some time. On the one hand, low mintage coins usually attract a premium over time. On the other hand, it seems that nearly all First Spouse Gold coins will have low mintages compared to commemorative coins, negating some of the allure.

The United States Mint will offer the next release in the First Spouse Gold Coin series on September 3, 2009 at 12:00 Noon ET honoring First Lady Sarah Polk. The latest coin comes less than one month after the previous release of the Julia Tyler coin.

The Sarah Polk First Spouse Gold Coin features her portrait on the obverse and a scene of her acting as her husband’s personal secretary in the White House. During her life, she devoted much of her time to furthering her husband’s politicial career. The obverse and reverse were designed and engraved by Phebe Hemphill.

Sarah Polk served as First Spouse for the 11th Presidency from 1845 to 1849.

The coins will be available in both proof and uncirculated versions, both produced at the West Point Mint. The US Mint will establish prices for the coins on Thursday based on the average London Fix price of gold for the prior week.

This marks the eleventh release of the series. Now in its third year, the series has lost many of the early eager buyers as the price of gold and the price of the coins have escalated. In the long term, this may work to the benefit of continued collectors of the series. When collectors grew tired of modern commemorative coins in the mid and late 1990’s, mintages declined to low levels, which eventually supported big premiums for the once unpopular releases.

For the first time in a while, one of the First Spouse Gold Coins has unexpectedly sold out at the United States Mint. For the past several coins, they have been systematically taken off sale as newer coins are released. The last coins that “sold out” were the first three issues where the entire authorized mintage of 40,000 coins had been sold.

Andrew Jackson’s Liberty First Spouse Coin, proof version was sold out earlier in the week. The sell out comes several weeks before the next coin release which will feature Sarah Polk. Also the uncirculated version of the coin remains available for sale.

Presumably, the US Mint made their final production run for the proof coin and underestimated how many would be needed to last until the planned end of sales. As a result, once their remaining inventory was sold, the coins had to be taken off sale.

The last available statistics indicate that 7,806 of the Andrew Jackson’s Liberty Gold Proof Coins were sold.