How to Avoid Presidential Dollar Hysteria

This piece is meant more as a public service than essay, though readers may find either to their taste.

Fresh off the immensely successful Statehood Quarter program in which the government, innocently enough, initiated one of the most successful marketing programs ever known in big business, comes the Presidential Dollar program: Yet another in a sequence of efforts by Big Brother to control costs by creating interest in, and thereby pervasive use of, a dollar coin in mainstream commerce. And while it remains to be seen whether or not this latest effort will suffer the failures of the Susan B Anthony and Sacagawea dollars before it, there is clearly an ancillary opportunity for collectors and dealers of coins to profit from, potentially excessively so, via an unwitting and gullible public.

One of the main reasons for the success of the Statehood quarters is that collectors love anything new and unique. Beginning quietly enough, the program exploded into the national consciousness in 2004 with the release of the Wisconsin quarter and the realization that a few thousand or so Denver-minted examples were struck with an oddity among the features of Wisconsin heritage depicted on the coin's reverse. Coupled with a wheel of cheese and bell-adorned bovine, was the predictable ear of corn defining the bevy of agricultural goodies produced by the state. Unpredictable, however, was the fact that these select quarters projected an ear with one of two varieties of extra leaves rendering them different and unique to the rest of the examples and an hysteria was borne.

Seemingly benign to the novice and non-collector, numismatists by the droves began to hunt for other anomalies or "die-varieties" as they are known within the hobby and the program hasn't been the same since. The Wisconsin "extra-leaf" varieties have brought hundreds and even thousands of dollars at auction and the resulting fervor began to yield varieties among several others in the series of quarters: The Minnesota version comprising no less than 40 varieties itself primarily due to anomalies among the many trees appearing on the coin. And until the series concludes in 2008 with the Hawaii quarter, other such varieties will continue to be hunted and discovered to varying degrees of excitement.

So now begins the Presidential dollar series: a four-coin per year program depicting a comparatively dull portraiture of each of our Commanders in Chief beginning with General Gorge Washington earlier this year and concluding with, unless another passes away during the life of the series, Ronald Reagan in 2016. But what makes the Presidential design somewhat more interesting is the fact that, for the first time since 1933, a coin will bear inscriptions not on either of the traditional obverse and reverse faces of the coin, but on the outside rim. In an effort to devote more space and detail to the portraits and to avoid unwarranted clutter, the defining legislation called for the year of issue, mint mark, and slogans E Pluribus Unum and In God We Trust to be relegated to the side edge incuse, or stamped into the coin rather than the traditional raised elements we have become familiar with.

This unique design feature not only offered a new and unique characteristic to generate interest in the coins, it also created a new opportunity for the US Mint to screw up in new and altogether unforeseen ways. Edge lettering was a new process for the mint, so it stands to reason that something was likely to go wrong along the way, and so it was discovered not long after the debut of the Washington Dollar that some tens of thousands of examples found their way into the hands of curious collectors without having gone through the edge-stamping process. This created, at once, an anomaly and an hysteria unknown during the quarter program. Suddenly, treasure-hunters were on the lookout for these "dateless" "godless" "atheist" dollars as they have alternately come to be known. And with the fever and an ever-present eBay auction site, came frenzied bidding and significant profiteering from those who were lucky enough to find some of these examples.

Naturally, as with any opportunity for huge profits, came those unscrupulous denizens of the world who would prey upon our greedy desires to possess one of these rarities, and almost as soon as the first legitimate errors appeared, there followed counterfeited fakes. These were created easily enough by merely sanding down and polishing the edges so as to obliterate the appearance of the incused lettering. This process is so obviously simple to replicate that it is likely as many counterfeit examples exist as do the real thing. And so I am compelled to issue a warning: Stay away from these error dollars for one of several reasons: First, because of the pervasion of false examples and, second, because of the unlikely long-term value of such examples. Any collectible bought during the height of interest and fervor is unlikely to maintain that value and is much more likely to decline as the number of examples available becomes apparent and the interest to wane.

Not that a collector has no business procuring and owning these examples, as they clearly are unique and fall into the category of collectible specimens. So should one consider these coins to be must-haves, by all means pursue your passion with a skeptic's eye and expectations. By which I mean expect to find rip-offs and expect to pay too much. The market price is based on supply and demand, as with any collectible or finite commodity and, at the moment, demand is high and supply uncertain. Prices are much more likely to fall down the road and it would be much the wiser choice to watch and wait.

The only other piece of advice I can offer is that if the decision to purchase is without question, find yourself an example certified as authentic by a legitimate and reputable grading company. There are nearly as many bogus and untrustworthy "slabbing" companies as there are counterfeit coins in the hobby, many with names or acronyms which are deceptively similar to the legitimate ones. The only slabs I would ever purchase are those from PCGS, NGC, ANACS, and in some cases ICG. Any others are subject to question and are just as likely to be peddling false goods as the real thing.

So pursue your passion as you see fit, but with a keen eye and a smart heart. The Presidential dollars may yet become a staple form of payment in the stream of commerce, though it is more likely to be relegated to the world of collectibles. The one thing that remains certain is that there will always be those that feast upon the weak and unaware. Instead, be among those at the center of the pack and learn as much as possible before spending your dollar, whether it be paper or coin.