By Ryan Butler – 4 Minute read
More than 100 million viewers will watch the Super Bowl coin toss, which ceremonially begins America’s most prominent sporting event. The game has become part of a growing gambling holiday that draws hundreds of millions in wagers – including millions of dollars on the result of the toss.
Despite the growing popularity of betting “heads” or “tails,” few consider the coin’s minters and their role in the toss’s outcome.
Background on minting the Super Bowl coin before the toss
The coin that will draw these millions of viewers and wagers was minted roughly 10 days before the Super Bowl in Melbourne, Florida, a coastal city of 90,000 people about 60 miles southeast of Orlando.
Highland Mint specializes in coins for all NFL teams and games as well as products for the NHL, NBA, MLB, and sports leagues across Europe. That included one-off coins for International NFL games in the 2024 regular season, including the opener in Brazil and games played in London and Germany. In recent years, the mint has also produced John Madden-featured coins for the league’s annual Thanksgiving triple-header.
“Our coins are made right here in the good old United States of America,” said Vince Bohbot, Highland Mint’s executive vice president, in an interview with Covers. “They’re sculpted by hand, and then the dyes and the platings done here as well.”
The privately owned mint has also created every official Super Bowl coin, including those used in the opening toss, for 31 years.
“We like to say, ‘the game doesn’t start without us,’” Bohbot said.
Super Bowl coin details
The Super Bowl coin toss grew from a low-key, untelevised affair to a highly anticipated commencement of each game.
Coins used in initial Super Bowl tosses were not pre-determined weeks in advance, let alone created for the event. By 1985, the game, and its de facto opening ceremony, had grown in prominence that then-president Ronald Reagan flipped the coin for Super Bowl XIX remotely from the White House just hours after he’d taken the oath of office for a second term.
The two sides of the coin were not displayed before that toss, as is customary now, and even the size and nature of the coin were not disclosed. In 1992, the NFL selected Highland Mint to manufacture a coin for its marquee event.
The league and the Mint have teamed up for every Super Bowl coin since.
“It keeps getting bigger and bigger,” Bohbot said. “My phone lights up with all texts as soon as it’s done and everybody asks, ‘Is that your coin?’”
Manufacturing each year’s Super Bowl coin begins hours after the league’s two conference championship games conclude. The first Super Bowl coins are completed about four days later. The NFL requires each coin to be plated with pure silver and then selectively plated with 24-karat gold.
The first coin minted for each game is numbered 000. Coin No. 001 is used for the opening toss; No. 000 is used if the game goes into overtime, as happened in last year’s Super Bowl between the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers.
Highland Mint produces 10,000 Super Bowl coins each year. The first hundred go to the NFL. Some league coins are preserved in the Hall of Fame or auctioned off in fundraisers. The rest are available to the public.
The NFL designs each coin with one side featuring the two Super Bowl participants’ respective helmets and the other the logo for that year’s game. Each coin has been presented in the same limited-edition series in the same display booklet for more than three decades, Bohbot said.
The Highland Mint in Melbourne has been providing the Super Bowl flip coin since 1994. They also made 10,000 commemorative flip coins for Super Bowl 58, between Kansas City and San Francisco. TIM SHORTT/ FLORIDA TODAY / USA TODAY NETWORK
“It’s really no secret,” Bohbot said about making the most famous coin in sports each year. “It’s just the quality with which it’s made and the fact this is minted like currency, just like how the US mint mints a silver dollar.”
Predicting the Super Bowl coin toss outcome
The Highland coin weighs about 1 oz. and has a diameter of 33 millimeters. Each one is roughly the size of a silver dollar.
“Tails” leads “heads” 30-28 all time. Highland’s coin has seen “tails” top “heads” 18 times to 13.
Bohbot said that even when Super Bowl or team helmet logos change, the difference in weight is imperceptible, with no more than a milligram difference on each side. Even then, the toss must bounce off the field, eliminating any potential weight discrepancy.
The heads-tails designation is also not predetermined; each referee picks if the team helmets or Super Bowl logo will represent “heads” or tails.”
With those factors in mind, friends still ask Bohbot before each game if they should pick “heads” or “tails.”
“It’s 50/50, so it’s a crapshoot,” Bohbot said about the outcome of the Super Bowl LIX toss, “but I’m going with ‘heads.’”
Source: Covers
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