April 23, 2007:

"Help Wanted"

Author:
J. Agre

Concept:
This one ranks high on our all-time favorites list.

First of all, we really, really liked this coin. It was a beautiful example of a neat, historic issue. And while people who know territorials well are quite familiar with this issue, we thought there was a good opportunity to expose this coin to a new audience.

We also thought the coin had a natural ‘hook’ in the interesting (and gigantic and centrally placed) engraving error on the obverse, and figured this would make excellent ad fodder.

We worked out a few ideas, finally settling on this one which we felt engaged the reader and forced them to take notice.

And I would say it worked extremely well, as the coin sold almost immediately to a collector previously unfamiliar with the issue who was intrigued by the big backward N.

Captions that didn’t make the cut:
"Does that N look odd to you?" was the first working version of this ad, but it didn’t work very well.

"I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something about that N doesn’t look quite right." was version two, but it still didn’t have enough zing.

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"Help Wanted"