silver certificates
The front of old silver certificates (like the one shown in Figure 2-3) state that they’re redeemable on demand at a federally insured bank for one silver dollar (or, later, for silver). The U. S. paper silver dollar was exchangeable for a metal silver dollar from 1863 to 1968. In 1964, the government changed the law and said that it was no longer going to exchange paper money for silver money; it gave people until June 24, 1968, to exchange any silver certificates they had on hand. Since that date, the government has had no obligation to exchange silver certificates for silver or silver coins, although the certificates are still legal tender for all debts public and private. Because of their high numismatic value, though, some of these certificates have greater value as collector’s items than as money.
Andrey_Lobachev / Adobe Stock
FIGURE 2-3: Silver certificates.
Getting Excited about Collecting Today
As kids, we could ride our bikes to the bank on a Saturday morning and swapped our allowance for rolls of coins. At the bench outside the bank, unwrapped the rolls, and pulled out all the old coins we could find. Then, fill the rolls with replacement coins, and run back inside to the teller, and swapped the picked-over rolls for new ones, repeating the process until they ran out of money or time. At the end of the morning, we would have piles of Indian-head cents, buffalo nickels, Mercury dimes, Standing Liberty quarters, Walking Liberty half dollars, and plenty of the more modern silver coins that had been discontinued a few years earlier. We spent the next week trading our treasures with other kids, and even sold some of the coins to local coin dealers — at a profit. We were budding tycoons having lots of fun.
Sadly, since the late 1980s, kids would be wasting their time trying to find anything rare or unusual in change. Occasionally, a Wheatie (the Lincoln cent with wheat ears on the back, struck before 1959) shows up, but all the silver coins have disappeared, and the modern-clad coins have huge mintages and no collector value. No wonder kids have migrated away from coins to baseball cards, and other collectibles.
Past programs like the 50 State Quarters and Sacagawea Dollars brought many new people into the hobby of coin collecting. Here are a couple of the reasons why people got getting excited about coin collecting again.
50 State Quarters
In 1999, the U.S. Mint began the 50 State Quarters program, issuing a series of 50 special quarter dollars, each representing an individual state. (The Delaware Quarter is shown in Figure 2-4.) The new coins have a common obverse (coin front); the reverses (coin backs) are chosen from designs submitted by each state. Each year, five new quarters were issued, spreading the program over a total of ten years. The U.S. Treasury reports that more than 100 million Americans collected the state quarters, including many who were completely new to collecting. To find out more about the 50 State Quarters program, turn to Chapter 13.
FIGURE 2-4: The 1999 Delaware Quarter — first of the 50 State Quarters.
Sacagawea dollar
In what was perhaps the biggest and most expensive advertising campaign ever for a new coin, the U.S. Mint introduced a new $1 coin in 2000. The new dollar (shown in Figure 2-5) featured the Native American guide Sacagawea and her infant son on the front, and an eagle on the back. To make the coin distinctive, the edge was left flat and plain, and the entire coin was struck from an alloy the color of gold. In a stroke of genius, the U.S. Mint contracted with Walmart stores throughout the country to distribute the new coins in limited quantities. Banks received very few of the coins, creating the false impression that the new coins were rare. In fact, billions of the Sacagawea dollars have been produced, so they’ll never be rare, but try to find one at your local bank or retail store. On top of that, many people thought the coins were made of real gold!
FIGURE 2-5: The 2000 Sacagawea dollar.
The public gobbled up these coins like crazy and locked them away in their sock drawers and safe-deposit boxes. Many of these hoarders have discovered the joys of numismatics and are now actively involved in collecting other coins as well.
New commemorative issues
In the “Commemorative coins” section earlier in this chapter, I mention abuses in the commemorative coin programs in the 1930s. Collectors in the 1940s and 1950s had a few commemorative coins to choose among, but collectors in the 1960s and 1970s were left high and dry. In 1982, the U.S. Mint began issuing commemorative coins again on a tentative basis. Today, the mint has hit its stride, issuing one or more commemorative coins each year in a variety of metals, set combinations, and price levels. New commemorative coins are available in gold, silver, and copper–nickel on subjects that appeal to a broad audience. Each new issue creates excitement among existing collectors and brings new collectors into the hobby, but the large mintages make it unlikely that the coins will increase in value. (See Chapter 13 to find out more about the many interesting commemorative coins issued by the U.S. government.)
Error coins
We give the U.S. Mint a lot of credit for a job well done. It reintroduced the Susan B. Anthony dollar, created and marketed the incredibly popular Sacagawea dollar, came up with 40 new quarter dollar designs in eight years, and worked around the clock to strike billions and billions of coins so that we can go out and spend them. As coin collectors and dealers, we owe a debt of gratitude to the U.S. Mint for doing something I’ve been trying to do for decades: getting people interested in numismatics.
I don’t say that mints are perfect. In fact, I acknowledge that the U.S. Mint is far from perfect. But as far as numismatics goes, imperfection is a good thing. Few industries have product lines in which the rejected items are more valuable than the perfect ones. Bad light bulbs get thrown away, imperfect clothing is sold as seconds, and defective washing machines sell in classified ads. None of them fetches a premium — certainly not the tens of thousands of dollars that some coin errors have brought.
In 2000, several spectacular error coins stunned the numismatic world. One such error was a coin with the front of a 50 State Quarter and the back of a Sacagawea dollar — the first U.S. coin ever to bear two denominations. Because the two dies differ in diameter, no one believed that it was possible for such an error to exist; in fact, some professionals believe that these error coins were made deliberately. The error received tremendous publicity
