Last year, we had all the “last silver dollar of the millennium” offers. This year, we get the exact same ads, except the following-year coin. We’ve also got tons of offers for the new quarters with state-specific designs on the obverse.
My question is this: What’s going on that would make this a suddenly hot advertising topic?
I’m aware that this could very well mutate into a different sort of thread – say, MPSIMS, with people recollecting annoying commercials (“build-a-bank, build-a-bank”), or GD, regarding the difficulty Americans have in thinking long-term, especially regarding finances.
But before that happens, I’m hoping someone can offer a reasonable explanation as to why buying a handful of quarters and a cheap cardboard mount (“a must for collectors!” …give me a break), or “the first silver dollar of the millenium,” or a ten-dollar Kennedy coin from Liberia, would suddenly be the latest craze.
My theory is this: Coin collectors (numismatics, I believe) have been doing this for years. Americans are always looking for the next sure-fire way to get rich fast. For the last few years, online day trading has been the new lottery. That bubble is threatening to burst, though, so something else has to come along to replace it. And some yo-yo with a post-office box in Cincinnati decides to paint a few coins (don’t they look godawful, by the way?) and offer them up in hopes the Great Unwashed Masses will think it’s a fabulous investment.
Agree? Disagree? And who on earth would be so uninformed as to believe this to be a good way to spend thirty bucks?
How about novelty? People find new things fascinating (especially when they’re shiny).
The stores in my area just got the new dollar coin. People are walking up to cash registers and changing paper bills for the coins, just so they can look at them. When they’ve seen enough of them, the hype will die down.
This is the way things are going to be, unless it isn’t.
It’s just the novelty of having a set of state coins, I guess. Doesn’t interest me, but my grandkids collect them.
Actually, I thought this question was going to be about the commercials for the new dollar coins. You know, the ones with a guy with George Washingtons head. Pretty funny.
I like the new dollar coins.
Peace,
mangeorge
Teach your kids to bungee jump.
One them might have to cross a bridge someday.
The new state quarters are driving the market. They initiated it and they will continue to drive it. The painted silver dollar thingy started about Sept-Oct last year. The quarters started in Jan 1999.
Considering that the Washington quarter has been the same since 1932, the Lincoln cent since 1909, the Jefferson nickel since 1938, the Roosevelt dime since 1948, boredom may have set in.
What I wanna know is why did they do away with “Liberty” head coins across the board. I think the last ones were the dimes carrying the “Mercury” misnomer. Since nobody knows what that Indian woman on the new really looked like, and thus are using an abstract representation of a historical personage, why not revert to a pure abstraction of an ideal like “Liberty”?
As I recall, there was a debate that took place after the decision was made that the new dollar coin would need to bear a female likeness about whether to use Sacajawea or Liberty. I gather that too many felt that using an idealized woman was a step backward after honoring the very concrete Susan B. Anthony in the first modern dollar coin.
Also the portrait went through a few different versions with a model (A Shoshone, I believe) who was picked from a list of applicants for having the right balance of innocence, earthiness, attractiveness and ‘nativeness’ and whatever else coin relief-sculptors look for. I remember seeing a full length portrait alongside the head-and-shoulders with child pose that was picked (anyone reminded of ‘young Elvis’ vs. ‘fat Elvis’?)
While I’m on the subject, I missed a Trivial Pursuit question by saying that the first Native-American woman to be honored on U.S. Currency was Sacajawea. The TP answer was Pocahontas. Is that right? Was it some sort of Bank of Massachusetts bill or something? Do commemoritives count? I couldn’t find satisfaction at the web sites for the Mint or the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
To get back to the original question: Why all the commercials? The mint wants everyone to start using the dollar coins as currency because printing one dollar bills costs so damn much. Ms. Anthony’s coin was supposed to do that 20(?) years ago but it failed. When enough dollar coins are in circulation, the supply of one dollar bills will decline.
Regarding the spelling of Sacagawea/Sacajawea’s name. Both spellings are used quite frequently. The mint probably picked one version for their literature, but since the name is actually a tansliteration of a name from a language that had no writing or alphabet, there is not a single “correct” version.
As for why Liberty got weaned off the coins in the first place, it was all meant to celebrate certain anniversaries-- Lincoln got onto the penny 100 years after his birth, Washington got onto the quarter 200 years after his. I can’t guarantee that Jefferson was born 200 years before he got on the nickel, but it wouldn’t surprise me. After Roosevelt died, and ended up on the dime, only the half dollar was left with Liberty in common circulation.
Well, considering how many bastards got to be President, I think it’s only fitting.
And, as an addendum to the **OP{/b]
The advent of the cable “Home Shopping” type channels are actually the real driving force. They have driven the prices of many coin-related items they are currently pushin…er, uh, selling to about double what they were in the “real” coin market in which I buy/sell daily. All within the past year.
Nice try, but wrong. In all the primary sources (Lewis and Clark’s journals as well as the journal of one the sergents) it’s spelled with a G, indicating that it was pronounced with a hard G sound. The J spelling first appeared in the first published edition which was edited by Nicholas Biddle. Why he changed the spelling is unknown. See http://www.lewisandclark.org/pages/sactext.htm for more.
Clever line, but unfortunately it doesn’t square with the facts. Sacagawea was married to Toussaint Charbonneau who also joined the expedition. Charbonneau actually had two Shoshoni wives, but only one accompanied them on the trip.
…caught in Nicholas Biddle’s trap once again. curses! (Oh, and by the way, dtilque, ‘scissors’ is spelled with an ‘s,’ even though it’s not pronounced that way.)
I was going to ask about the pronunciation, because I HAVE heard it with a hard ‘g’ as well as more commonly with the soft ‘j’ sound. Too bad she, unlike Moammar El-Gadhafi, never typed up a letter to a second grade class in St. Paul.
No one can help with the Pocahontas currency question? We’re going to leave Trivial Pursuit unpursued?
So why not just yank the bills from circulation entirely? The coins would certainly be popular if people had no alternative, and the government would save on advertising money to boot.
Speaking of coin-related commercials, has anyone else seen the ones hawking a big cardboard map with holes cut out for all the state coins? $25! Of course they do include the first five quarters, so technically the price is $23.75. And it comes with a certificate of authenticity. An authentic WHAT?! Piece of cardboard? Or authentic coins, hundreds of millions of which are sitting in cash registers and coat pockets around the nation?
