August 17, 2009: "Start Here"

Author:
J. Agre

Concept:
We could have gone in many directions with this ad and this coin, focusing on the patriotic 1776 date, or the cool and historic design by Benjamin Franklin, or the fact that this issue is prominently featured in the ‘100 Greatest US Coins’ book, or the incredible original skin this piece possesses.

But instead, we decided to highlight the fact that this is a colonial coin which can appeal to collectors of early federal issues by reprising an ad caption which we wrote a while ago but never used.

Captions that didn’t make the cut:
Given the options noted above, we should have been able to come up with lots of captions. And we did – the problem is that most of them sucked.

Such as "It’s like a Fugio Cent on steroids.", which didn’t really convey any important message, and created a slight dilemma as to what to call a Fugio (since technically Copper is more accurate, but Cent reads better in this application).

Which led us to the unbelievably pedestrian "Ranked #12 in the ‘100 Greatest US Coins’ book.", which had the added issue of requiring quotes within quotes, which we always avoid since it looks weird (to me).

Feeling ambivalent about the whole thing, we opted for the caption in the final ad. And now that we see it in print in finished form, we still feel ambivalent about it.