March 12, 2012: "About 5 Times Rarer"

Author:
C. Sloan

Concept:
Based on how few of these we’ve seen through the years, we knew this diminutive denomination was a lot less common than its larger $5 brother. But when we saw the concrete PCGS Population Report data, we knew we had to feature it in a CRO ad (like this one, for example).

Because, at the time of this writing, there were a total of 2,337 Draped Bust Heraldic Eagle $5’s slabbed by PCGS in all grades combined vs. just 432(!) of these Quarter Eagles, a fantastic 5.41 to 1 ratio.

Captions that didn’t make the cut:
We knew we were going with a ‘fun with numbers’ style caption, first considering the mintage of this 1802/’1′ date (a scant 3,035 or so), or the number of survivors believed to be extant (just 162), or the total number slabbed at PCGS (a downright puny 75).

But in the end, we thought this coin was most likely to be purchased by a type collector, making the $5 vs. $2.5 population ratio the most compelling figure of all. The fact that it also allowed some ‘5 times – $5’ numerical alliteration made it all the better.

So we used it.