February 15, 2010: "Panning for Gold"

Author:
D. Wnuck

Concept:
In our opinion, people do not want to read numismatic ad copy that can blandly refer to any coin ("A wonderful example that would fit nicely in any collection!!"), so we always look for a ‘hook’ to link each CRO ad caption to the featured coin in a very specific way.

Which in this case was the neat gold-gold double meaning, referring both to the contents of the prospector’s pan and one of the cool toning colors around the rim on this fabulous California commem.

Captions that didn’t make the cut:
The first iteration of this ad "There’s gold in them thar hills! (and aqua, violet and royal blue along the rims") was philosophically similar to the final version, but failed to make as direct and readily understandable a connection to the coin shown (since there aren’t actually any hills on it).

Plus using colloquialisms like "thar" in an ad caption is always very risky in my experience, since you have to expect that a certain percentage of the readers will not understand it, will assume it is a typo, and will ridicule you the next time they see you at a show.

And who needs that aggravation? Exactly.