Les Pieces de l'Olympique de Montreal 1976

By Alexandre Bergeron. Article guardé dans sa langue originelle. Traduction a venir!

Some of the most common items we evaluate at our office are the 1976 Montreal Olympic coins. But why are they so common? And are they worth anything special? In answering those questions, we will look through the production history of those coins, the different varieties you may have, and what to do if you have those coins.

In 1973, the Canadian Mint undertook quite a lofty goal. They would begin the production of commemorative silver and gold coins with the hopes of financing the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games in its entirety. While the endeavor didn't quite pan off, in fact the sales of these coins would only cover shy of 10% of the 1 billion dollar cost of the Olympic games and it would end up being the biggest coin production the mint would produce at the time, outside of regular coins for circulation.

They would produce 7 different series of 4 silver coins, two 5 dollar coins and two 10 dollar coins,

culminating in a 28 silver coin set. They would also produce 2 gold coins, a 14k gold coin and a 22k gold coin. As their goal was to create a large amount of revenue very quickly, they would end up producing millions of examples of these coins, and they proved quite a popular seller in the Montreal region. They were available directly from the Royal Canadian Mint, many banks, and sold by coin dealers (like us).  This is why the 1976 Montreal Olympic coin sets are in almost every coin collection we see from that period.

The coins were sold to collectors in 2 different finishes, brilliant uncirculated and proof. The two are easy to tell apart. The brilliant uncirculated give the coins a nice shiny matte finish and the proof examples give the coin a stunning mirror finish with a frosty design. Although they were sold at different prices initially, both proof and uncirculated examples are worth the same price today.

We most typically find these coins in nice black box sets of 4 silver coins (each containing one the 7 series of two 5s and two 10s) or in a large brown suitcase style case (With lock and key) containing the full set of 7 series for a total of 28 silver coins. The commemorative gold coins however are found either in a plastic flip in a brown cardboard sleeve for the 14k example, and a brown single coin case for the 22k.

But how do you tell apart which gold coin you have if it was taken out of the packaging? There's a simple trick you can do to differentiate them. The 14k has a ring of beads around the rim of the coin encircling the design while the 22k coin is slightly smaller and does not have the ring beads.

The next big question is how much are those coins worth? Due to how common they are, they do not have any sort of premium collector value, like some other rarer coins might have. However, these coins do have value thanks to their precious metal content. The silver series of coins were made with sterling silver (92.5% silver content) while as stated before, the gold coins are made with either 14k gold (58.3% gold content) or 22k gold (91.6% gold content). Due to the ever changing price of precious metal, any price we list here would be out of date by the next day, as such if you are ever interested in finding out what they are worth or are interested in selling them, feel free to contact us and it will be our absolute pleasure to give you our current buying prices.

Sources:

1. Charlton Standard Catalogue Volume 2 Canadian Collector Coins; ISBN 978-0-88968-440-9

2. Striking Impressions  by Dr. James A. Haxby; ISBN 978-0660115634

3. Royal Canadian Mint Site Officiel