America the Beautiful 5 Oz Silver Coins are a series of five ounce, 99.9% fine silver strikes released by the United States Mint. The coins are actually issued as part of two different U.S. Mint series, including the America the Beautiful Silver Bullion Coins® Program and the America the Beautiful Five Ounce Uncirculated Coin™ Program. Both feature an obverse portrait of George Washington, the first President of the United States, and a reverse emblematic of a selected site of national interest from around the United States and its territories.

The weight and purity of the America the Beautiful 5 Oz Silver Coins are guaranteed by the government of the United States with a total weight of 155.5 grams and an extremely large diameter of 76.2 mm (3.0 inches). Current melt value information for the coins can be found using the calculator in the right column. These coins feature a legal tender face value of only twenty-five cents, however, their intrinsic and numismatic values are significantly higher.

The America the Beautiful Silver Bullion Coins Program was directly authorized by Congress as part of the America’s Beautiful National Parks Quarter Dollar Coin Act of 2008. As indicated by the name of the Act, the coins were authorized along with a series of circulating quarters from which the bullion coins take their designs.

This includes an obverse portrait of George Washington by John Flanagan as seen on the circulating quarters of the United States in one form or another since 1932. It also includes reverse designs emblematic of fifty-six different sites of national interest from around the United States and its territories. One site was chosen from each state as well as the District of Columbia and the five U.S. territories.

Along with the bullion coins, the U.S. Mint also opted to produce the America the Beautiful Five Ounce Uncirculated Coin™ Program as numismatic versions of those releases. It did so under the authority granted the Secretary of the Treasury in 31 U.S.C. §5111(a) (3) to produce and sell items of numismatic interest.

Both silver series debuted with five 2010-dated strikes, the same as seen in the associated quarter dollar series. All three programs feature five new coins released annually until all fifty-six chosen sites have each been honored. The final coins of each program are scheduled to appear in 2021.

The bullion series is not sold directly to the public by the U.S. Mint. Instead, a network of authorized purchasers is used which obtains the coins in bulk from the Mint and then resells them to the public in smaller quantities for a small premium above the current spot price of the five ounces of silver in each one. This same network is used to distribute bullion American Silver Eagles.

The uncirculated coins are sold directly to the public by the Mint. However, whereas the bullion strikes are initially sold for a small premium above the spot price of five ounces of silver, the uncirculated coins initially feature a much larger premium as is standard for U.S. Mint numismatic products.

Both America the Beautiful 5 Oz Silver Coins are nearly identical and feature the same basic specifications. The main differentiating factor between the two is the inclusion of a mintmark on the uncirculated version.

Since America the Beautiful 5 Oz Silver Coins are struck from five ounces of .999 fine silver, they each have a melt value approximately equal to what those five ounces would currently trade for on the open market. Thus, if silver was trading for $30 and ounce, these coins would have a melt value of about $150 — five ounces times $30 an ounce equals $150.