Finding A Modern Trove (Spring 2009)

Sometimes in this hobby you just get lucky! The days of finding great rarities in change might have passed into history, but there are still some fantastic moments that a collector can have.

But before I go off on a tangent, let’s start at the beginning.

The presidential dollar series is now going into its third year. The collectors, dealers, and entire numismatic community knows quite a bit about our newest attempt at a dollar coin made in a base metal, but the general public seems to remain blissfully unaware of these “golden” dollars. That might be because the Mint has not launched the same type of ad campaign it did years ago for the Sacagawea dollar. Some of us remember the television ads with an animated George Washington – the same bust as is on the one dollar bill actually – telling us that the new coins were a dollar and that using them was a way to save money, in that they lasted longer than the one dollar bills. More than a couple of op-ed columnists in newspapers around the nation suggested at the time that it was hard to believe an ad campaign which involved spending $67M – yes, sixty seven million dollars! – to induce people to spend a single dollar coin was somehow going to save us money. But the campaign ran on various television ads for quite some time.

The ad campaign for the presidential dollars appears to be more subdued. That in turn means that plenty of people who work at a cash register aren’t all that savvy as to what these new dollars are. I have yet to see a cashier at any store refuse one, but they usually give them a second glance before lobbing them in the till.

Since there doesn’t appear to be a lot of visible interest in these coins, I’ve taken to asking cashiers if they’ve seen any of them. More often than not, the answer is “no,” or a quizzical look. But on occasion, they have a couple, and are willing to swap them for “regular dollars,” meaning one dollar bills. By the way, if you want to do a bit of collecting this way, let me cue you into the informal protocol that goes along with asking for dollar coins from a cashier.

• First, don’t ask at a fast food restaurant when there are people behind you. Doing so slows things down, gets you muttered at, and sometimes gets outright rude remarks from the people behind you.
• Second, always ask politely, and mention that you don’t want to get the cashier in trouble with their boss. Whether it’s a grocery store, a fast food joint, a coffee shop, or any other spot with a till, the cashier is invariably low on the totem pole. Mentioning to them that you don’t want to get them in hot water with the boss usually endears them to you and your request.
• Third, have some ones in your pocket! Don’t put some poor cashier through the drill of looking for coins they don’t want, only to whip out a $20 from some ATM and expect them to make more change for you. Try hard to have plenty of smaller bills to make the swap.

Okay, with all this in mind, I was at a Detroit area Burger King recently, with my son Chris, on a very quiet Friday evening. I had been asking about dollar coins for weeks, with a constant string of “no” answers coming back at me. In those weeks he and I had found plenty of recent quarters, including a Washington , DC – P quarter, but the dollars were basically a dry well. We were at the drive-through of this BK, there wasn’t a car behind us, or in sight for that matter, and I asked the cashier about the presidential dollars, as my son gave a slight shake of his head (he does tolerate me, I’ll give him that).

The young man commented that he thought they had a bunch in the back, and that he would ask the manager. I made a quick comment about not wanting to get him into trouble, but the manager was quick to come to the window and tell me she had quite a few, and would go take a look in the safe. A moment later she came back with twenty three dollar coins! She pointed out to me that one of them wasn’t “gold,” but I told her it wasn’t a problem, knowing that this was probably a Susan B. Anthony thrown into the mix. The transaction took only a moment, but we ended up having to give a quick ‘thank you’ as we took off, since a line of four cars had formed behind us.

The two of us were on our way to a college basketball game after this wonderful find, so I had to content myself with hefting my new trove of dollars throughout the game, and with waiting impatiently until we got home. The wait was worth it.

The break-down of these twenty three dollar coins were as follows: one 1979-P Susan B. Anthony dollar, one 2000-P, one 2000-D, and one 2001-P Sacagawea dollar, which was a pretty good representation of the dollar coins that pre-date the presidents.

As for the presidentials, well they were: one Washington –P and two –Ds, two John Adams –Ps, four Jefferson –Ps, one James Monroe –P, one John Q. Adams –D, three Andrew Jackson –Ps, and a whopping 5 Van Buren –Ps. Only President Madison didn’t make an appearance in this particular fistful of dollars.

There have got to be some other troves out there for a lucky collector to find. If you have a few one and five dollar bills of your own, why not try this question-and-answer form of collecting? Apparently, even the dry wells eventually re-fill. Or maybe, as I said, sometimes you just get lucky! Good hunting.