May 4, 2020: "Lucky 13"

Author:
M. Agre

Concept:
Given the often negative connotation of the #13 in popular culture (causing some hotels to skip that floor altogether), we decided to highlight the fact that this fantastic, original 1913-S Barber 25¢ graded MS63 by PCGS and awarded a gold sticker by CAC is, well, the opposite, and is sure to bring good luck to its next owner.

Captions that didn’t make the cut:
We were very close to going with “Triskaidekaphilia.“, which while it is not technically a word, certainly could be, combining the Greek Triskaideka (meaning thirteen) with -philia (Greek for fondness) and would thus be the opposite of the oft seen Triskaidekaphobia (fear of thirteen, as in it gives bad luck).

Ultimately that seemed like too much of a word salad, so we went with the more direct approach in the final ad. In retrospect that was probably a mistake, since having readers spending extra time staring at your ads trying to decipher them can be a good thing. Oh well – we’ll probably use that for another 13-dated coin sometime down the road.