May 19, 2008: "$6 Gold Piece"

Author:
D. Wnuck

Concept:
Remembering that we always try to identify the most interesting attribute of every coin featured in our ads, we wracked our brains (actually Dave did – my brain was napping) and came up with the startling revelation that this coin all but dared 1830’s era entrepreneurs to melt it the second it rolled off the press. You see, based on the price of gold at that time (which Dave researched in great detail while I was golfing), this issue contained more gold than its face value.

And, not surprisingly, many were melted, turning a $5 coin into $6 worth of gold in short order (and contributing greatly to the rarity of these pieces some 176 years later).

Captions that didn’t make the cut:
We flirted very briefly with the idea of doing a fat head gag (since this type is known as the ‘Fat Head Five’), but quickly decided that it was better to highlight the more serious topic described above.

And there were variants of the final theme, including “Curiously, this $5 coin contained $6 worth of gold on the day it was minted.”, and “It should have been called a $6 gold piece (since that’s how much gold it contained in 1832).”

Ultimately we decided to be as clear and concise as possible, since we figured the facts would be interesting (and potentially confusing) enough without a lot of verbal embellishment.