October 4, 2010: "Gem-balaya"

Author:
J. Agre

Concept
Actually, we’ve had this caption ‘at the ready’ for quite some time, waiting until we had just the right gem uncirculated New Orleans mint issue for it.

Which turned out to be today, with this lovely, lustrous and beautifully toned Barber Half.

Captions that didn’t make the cut:
The only thing we considered (briefly) was to find some interesting historical events which happened in 1908, and then try to tie them to this coin in an extremely clever way.

Unfortunately, the only notable things that happened in that year (other than this coin being carefully minted and then immediately placed in a velvet-lined tray, apparently) was the Tunguska Blast, which leveled a Siberian forest, and the death of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in Bolivia of all places.

And those did not sound like good ad fodder to me.