Coronavirus (COVID-19) as impacted another Numismatic event. The sale of the Basketball Hall of Fame commemorative coins has been delayed until April 9, 2020 as a result of the NCAA cancelling the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments. The commemoratives were set to be launched April 4, 2020 in conjunction with the tournaments. The NCAA cancelled the tournament earlier this month which was set to being this week out of public health concerns around COVID-19.
Originally, the NCAA had announced that they would continue to host the tournaments but would do so in empty arenas. However, as the pandemic of Coronavirus escalated, the governing body quickly walked that back and called off the events.
With the cancellation, the pressing need for the United States Mint to get the commemoratives ready was reduced and the Mint announced yesterday that sales would be delayed for five days. The extra time will allow the Mint to assure they have plenty of stock on hand as the Mint itself has also been impacted by the pandemic.
According to the Mint’s Production Schedule, sales of all of these commemoratives will begin on April 9, 2020. No pricing information is available currently nor is there an indication if there will be any household limits in place on purchases. The Mint will produce and issue up to 50,000 $5 gold coins, 400,000 $1 silver coins, and 750,000 half–dollar clad coins. Surcharges collected from coin sales—$35 for each gold coin, $10 for each silver coin, and $5 for each half–dollar coin—are authorized to be paid to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame to fund an endowment that will enable increased operations and educational programming.
As you may recall, the Mint held a first strike ceremony in Philadelphia with several basketball dignitaries on site.
You can see all of the commemoratives in this series at the United States Mint’s image library, found here.