Publicity Stunt

Very doubtful- the US Mint hates making mistakes. In their opinion, it makes them look bad. In the past they have been reluctant, almost unwilling, to confirm things like this.

In my opinion, if this was done intentionally then I can't consider it to be an error, but rather a variety.

I believe it was intentional as the Mint needs a MAD run on these dollars as Congress is looking over their shoulder on this one! An error worth $50 t0 $60 bucks can and will bring the greed out in most folks and having one already sell near the $600 level is also a HUGE boost for mint officials. It amazes me that supposedly an error has occured, got past inspectors at the mint but they still know approximately 50,000 went out the door? I must say this story and news release by the Mint has an odor to it? Think what you may but I can guarantee you the government knows how most folks will react to most anything that the media spits out!

I might point out that it took the Mint months to admit the 2005 Speared Buffalo nickel was an error. There was a huge investigation into this matter and it still took forever to get that nickel classified as an official error by ANY ONE! This came about very quickly, the mint fessed up and its no big deal? Yep, something stinks!

Hmmm. Terry, that's really something to think about. What better way to get millions of people to the bank to grab rolls of the dollars in the hope that they may find some hidden treasures. Pretty good market strategy actually.

Maybe, just maybe we should call the mints bluff and not "frenzy" over this. Let's just not spend these. That'll show 'em...LOL

There is a department at the Mint called MESS. This department is the Mint Error Secret Service (MESS). This department was created due to the massive departure of the usage of our monitarty system which would put many government workers at the Mint our of work. And everyone knows there is no such thing as a government employee being out of work. This department has agents that go into the Mint, force errors to happen, secretly send these coins out to places where they will be noticed. Then this department is responsible for the notariety, fame and publicity of that coin. Now this forces all the people to become coin collectors and hoard all the coins they can get their hands on. Of course this means a coin shortage so the Mint must produce even more of such coins and again, more errors. Now instead of being layed off due to lack of work, Mint workers are working more than ever producing coins that no one would otherwise want, use, need, request, etc.
A recent story on TV said there are now 160 million coin collectors in the USA and mostly due to the Mints great issuance of the successful Bicentennial coins, State Quarters and now the very, very famous baby dollars. Obvously that story was by the MESS department or 50% of the entire population collects coins.
Haven't you noticed the amount of error coins being found lately?

I doubt it was a publicity stunt, in fact with the mint's high standards, it makes them look a little embarrassing. If the mint knowingly turned a blind eye to these errors, then I would think they would have to answer to someone. I just think it is more of a case of negligence than publicity. The mint did not pay attention when inspecting the side of the dollar, instead I believe they only looked at the obverse and reverse.