October 1, 2007: "Opposable Thumb"

Author:
J. Agre

Concept:
Every several weeks we like to run an ad featuring a cool coin that is less than $1,000. Since the ad alone costs about $300, this makes little sense commercially – unless the ad increases awareness in CRO, drives traffic to our site and helps sell other coins. So when we do advertise coins like this, we like to go for maximum impact.

In this case, it was easy. The rampant lion motif is cool, but I couldn’t help but notice that the engraver gave him a humanoid hand to grasp his sword. Viola! A concept was born.

Captions that didn’t make the cut:
We were basically one and done in this case, though we did briefly consider using ‘prehensile’ instead of ‘opposable’. We opted for the one most likely to be understood, though we were surprised that a number of people did ask us what opposable meant. Which indicated to us that they had at least read and remembered the ad – and that’s half the battle.

For those who do not know, an opposable thumb can be moved in opposition to and around to touch the other fingers, which gives people (and primates) the ability to grasp things. Like swords. Lions have paws.