MELBOURNE, Fla. – The Highland Mint in Melbourne has shipped the Super Bowl 50 gold coin to the NFL will be in the opening toss to see which team gets the ball first, News 6 partner Florida Today reports.
For more than a decade, The Highland Mint has made the 24-karat gold-plated coins with silver overlay for 23 of the 49 Super Bowls on behalf of the NFL.
Florida Today listed the top five facts fans should know about the gold coin that will be used on Feb. 7, when the Carolina Panthers will square off against the Denver Broncos in San Francisco in the Golden Anniversary of the Super Bowl.
1. "It's the first year that the Super Bowl logo is going to be heads and the side with the team logos is going to be tails," said Michael Kott, head of the Highland Mint. "Since it's the 50th Super Bowl, that's how the NFL decided to do it."
2. "In the past 49 years, it's been heads 24 times (meaning tails has come up 25 times.) So this year, based on statistics, it should be heads."
Fun fact: Four out of the past six teams that called the coin toss correctly ended up winning the Super Bowl, Kott added.
3. "It's the biggest prop bet they have," according to Timmy Vee of Coastal Hyundai. Vee, who is a friend of Kott's, has stamped serial No. 1 on the Super Bowl coin for the past 10 years. "There's over 350 prop bets on the Super Bowl, and the coin toss is the biggest one out of all of them. There's a lot of money made and lost when that thing flies up into the air."
4. "We make 10,000 (coins). The one with serial No. 1 is the one that's actually flipped at the game," according to Kott. That coin is then sent to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.
5. "We also make a coin numbered with 0 on it," Kott said. "That they keep in case the game goes into overtime to see who's going to kick off. Luckily, that hasn't been used yet."
Read more at FloridaToday.com.