What's The Fascination With Ike Dollars?

Gobrecht? I call him lightweight.

Ummm. George T. Morgan is the man, the myth, the legend. Frankie comes in a close second though

Never heard of this Gobsmacker guy

Back when the Ike dollars were first released, there was a push to put as many as possible into circulation, so I had a couple dozen that I pulled from pocket change. Interest soon waned and poor Ike faded from normal circulation. Back then, I didn't love nor hate the Ike dollars. I was too busy with my other collections to pay much attention to the last large dollar coin. Fast forward to 1.5 years ago. I was seeing the light at the end of the tunnel on some of my collections and cast about for a new project. The more I learned about the Ike dollars, the more I got interested. There were proofs, mint sets, 40% silver, all kinds of varieties (1971-D friendly eagle, 1972-P type 1, 2, and 3, 1976 type 1 and 2, peg legs, etc.), and several kinds of die clash marks. While there are some challenges, most are fairly available. Now I like Ike and have a decent little collection that I'm proud of.

Frank Gasparro ......

I think first .. it would be wrong to compare classics
to modern coins.

To me the best designs were the era of coins introduced
from 1907 through 1916.

But each era is going to be different.

So who is this guy Frank Gasparro .... he was born in 1909,
24 days after the release of the Lincoln Cent.

He started working at the U.S. mint in 1942 as a junior
assistant under some guy named John R Sinnock.
After Gilroy Roberts retired in late 1964 Frank Gasparro
became the tenth Chief Engraver of the U.S. Mint.

What coins are his design

Lincoln Memorial (reverse)
Kennedy half dollar (reverse)
Susan B Anthony

And Eisenhower dollar

If you count his success by the number of coins minted with
his design, the number would be in the hundreds of billions
of coins.

That is a lot of math to do, to see who has the most.

Barbers numbers would not even be close.

Starting around 1959 Memorial were steady over a billion,
in the 80's many years with over 10 billion minted.

Brenner may be the winner, as far as numbers.

I am not going to add up all the Kennedy, SBA and Ike
coins to see if there are more than wheat cents. I have
read some on Gasparro and something like that was printed,
I have not done the math myself.

I do know modern coins are minted at much higher levels than
classics coins or most pre 1940 coins.

----------------------------------------------------

I pretty much like all coins. It took me a while to come
around to SBA dollars .. but once you do a set of them
you start to see the beauty of the coin.

Barber coins get a bad rap .. I think because most collectors
judge them based on the worn examples that most see.
Once you have seen a UNC set of Barbers, many might change their
minds.


All this is just my opinion

It's on like Donkey Kong in here

Ouch. Harsh!

No worry. More Ikes for me.