The American Mint will for the first time in it's history produce pink gold coins in order to support the fight against breast cancer.

President Obama has signed “The Breast Cancer Awareness Commemorative Coin Act, H.R. 2722” into law this past Friday, after the United States Congress has passed the bill earlier in the month.

The bill, which was introduced by Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY), authorizes the production of three commemorative coins for release in 2018. The design of the coins must symbolize the fight against breast cancer.

According to the legislation the US Mint is authorized to produce up to 50,000 pink gold $5 commemorative coins. In addition to this there will also be 400,000 silver one dollar and 750,000 silver clad half-dollars commemorative coins.

This will mark the first time that the US Mint will produce pink gold commemorative coins. Pink gold is a result of creating an alloy of 75% gold, 5% silver and 20% copper. The result is a very distinctive 'soft' colouring of the metal.

In recent history the most notable example of this would be the Canadian Mints Queen Elizabeth Rose $3 coin with rose gold plating, released earlier this year.

Until now the US Mint has strictly produced collector's coins in 90% gold. Another interesting thing to note from the bill is the wording for the silver dollar coin. The bill states that the coin "contain not less than 90 percent silver" , instead of the usual 90% silver. Including the words ”not less than” opens the door for the mint to produce coins of higher fineness. It is quite common for other world mints to produce silver collectors coins in .999 fineness. But this point is, at least for now, speculation.

Furthermore the coins will all have a small surcharge added to their sale price. The additional money raised by this will be donated to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. The gold coin will have an additional $35.00 charge per coin. $10.00 and $5.00 will be added to the silver dollar and clad half dollar respectively.

As soon as the design of the coins have been chosen we'll report on it right here on World Numismatic News.