February 6, 2012: "Someone Important"

Author:
J. Agre

Concept:
The earliest U.S proof coins were carefully produced in miniscule numbers and given to VIP’s and exotic-sounding foreign dignitaries like the Sultan of Muscat and the King of Siam.

And while we cannot say with certainty for whom this spectacularly beautiful, original, proof Capped Bust Half Dollar was struck, we can say with confidence that 1) It must have been someone important, and 2) It seemed like a cool thing to highlight in a CRO ad.

Captions that didn’t make the cut:
We wanted to go with "Struck for Kings, Presidents, Sultans and Emperors" (which would have allowed us to use the word ‘Sultan’ for the first time in a caption), but since we couldn’t prove that that was the case, we decided to be a little more general.

So we instead tried "Struck for VIP’s and Diplomats.", but that was instantly rejected by our staff of writers as (and I quote) "cold and uninspiring", "terrible", and "I am disappointed in you".

Leading us to the more engaging version seen in our final ad.