July 27, 2009: "A Denarium Saved"

Author:
M. Agre

Concept:
This was an especially interesting ad, as we featured an ultra rare and very choice Maryland ‘Denarium’ (Latin for ‘Penny’) that even most advanced collectors have never seen before.

But advertising this coin was not without its challenges, since this denomination bears the same obverse design as the not-so-rare Maryland Sixpence and Shilling, and it is has an unfamiliar name (since not all collectors speak Latin).

Sure, the coin is copper (unlike the larger denominations), but we feared that might not be obvious in a CW print photo, which meant that our caption had to make it very clear that this was a Penny and do so in a most clever and interesting way.

Captions that didn’t make the cut:
We started with "Am I delirious? No – it IS a Denarium!" ‘echoing’ the denomination, but decided that a coin of this rarity (and price range) deserved a more serious caption than that.

So we migrated toward familiar quotes that normally feature the word penny, starting with "Denarium from Heaven.", but feared this might be interpreted by our readers merely as a smug endorsement of the coin.

Leading us to the Benjamin Franklin quote you see in the final ad, which seemed like the right tone for a coin of this stature.