Presidential Dollars - Of The Future?

Have you been collecting Presidential Dollars yet? I have been saving them as I come across them in circulation. My wife even got me a pair of Presidential Dollar boards to save them in and just this week a packaging company - Armored Brand USA - sent me a sample of a super bookcase style binder designed for collecting Presidential Dollars.

Recently the Andrew Jackson Dollar was released and his wild haired presence on a circulating coin is what poped into my head when I came to the end of my next presidential adventure, related below. Keep reading, and don't worry, I won't cross political views with coin collecting too seriously!

The other evening I made a choice to watch the Discovery Channel with my sons and DVR the Presidential candidates debate for later viewing. One of the many commercial interuptions we sat through while watching our shows was a political campaign endorsement for one Bob Barr and my youngest son asked who this fellow was, as he had not previously seen his ads.

My youngest son has been watching and discussing the debates with classmates at school this election year and so the prospect of a new candidate, this Bob Barr fellow, both interested and agitated him. In way of explaination, I sought out a website that offered pictures of and links to all known 2008 Presidential candidates who appear on one or more State ballots. There's quite a number of them, and several websites designed to introduce us to them. Take a look for yourself at: Vote Smart or Politics 1 or Wikipedia.

After looking through a number of pages and seeing so many hopeful future presidential faces, I began to wonder, who in all this crowd might one day find their likeness on a Presidental Dollar? Do any of them look like good Presidential Dollar material to you?

Metals On The Slide

This week has been tough on commodities with Gold and the other precious metals we coin collectors follow regularly not beening spared this time around. Gold hit a one month low just below $800 an ounce, with silver below $10, and nearing $9.50. Platinum down is dramatically to about $875, with Palladium crashing well below $200 down to about $170 this morning.

Crude oil has dropped mercifully just below $70 a barrel, giving consumers a big break at the gas pump and the U.S. dollar has solidified with some nice gains against most other major world currencies.

Most silver and gold commemorative coins will remain high in the coin market for a while however, as they react more slowly to a decline than they do to rising spot prices. Platinum and Palladium coins generally hold less demand in the collector market, making them react more quickly to both the rise and fall of spot metals prices.

Contibutor Printouts Hit the Postal System

Even though I am still involved in the last weeks of final production on the soon-to-be-sent-to-the-printer 4th edition 17th Century Standard Catalog of World Coins, the last couple of weeks I have been working on the start of next years 20th and 21st Century SCWC.

When preparing for a new edition of the Standard Catalog of World Coins the first thing we do is determine what printouts will be needed for our contributors. I do this with the help of our contributor data files, so if you are a contributor and you have not contacted me with any changes of address or interest, we will be sending you pretty much the same countries to update as you got last year. Once I have a list ready, our database specialist, Deb McCue starts running the needed country files. Once they are all complete, Deb prints out multiple copies of each needed country. That takes a plenty of time and a lot of paper. Deb used up several cases of printer paper this year!

While Deb is doing that, I write a cover letter, laying out the deadlines and instructions. I order envelopes, get labels run and get the letter printed.

After the printouts are run and filed alphabetically we set out pulling what each contributor needs, stuffing envelopes, labeling and sending them out. That's what I have been doing this last week.

While I have been working on the 20th and 21st Century Coin Catalog mailing, George Cuhaj has been working on a Modern Paper Money mailing. This year these books are running close together, so if you are a contributor on both, please set aside a little extra time this fall to concentrate on your suggested improvements, changes and price updates.

While most of the updating work done on our catalogs is still completed by hand, a few contributors have been sending in their updates electronically, using NumisMaster or in a few cases, a DVD of the book. I like the immediacy of these electronic contributions. I also like the way they save trees!

If you have an area of world coin specialty and would like to participate in your hobby by keeping the KP catalogs up to date, please drop me a line at tom.michael@fwpubs.com I am always happy to hear from folks who want to share their expertise in numismtics!