Why Are The Daniel Carr Pieces So Popular?

I collect Sacagawea dollars and found his designs for the small dollars, both Presidential and Sacagawea, superior to those chosen by the mint and collected those. I've added a few others, including his Apollo design, for no other reason than I like them.

His quality of workmanship rings the bell for me.

Some people hate his stuff, some people love it. Goes with the territory.

In my mind, the connection that many of his pieces have to actual US coins draws collectors of the other series to his pieces. (I'm thinking mostly of his fantasy over-strike pieces.)

I don't own many Carr pieces, but I did buy his "1975" Bicentennial quarter, half dollar and dollar over-strikes. I liked the fact that they represented 1975-dated versions of the designs vs. the Federal dual-dated (1776-1976) commemorative coins. The US bicentennial coins were struck in 1975 AND 1976, so I found it intriguing to see the designs with 1975 dates.

I've listened to other collectors voice similar stories about Carr pieces in their collections.

Having collected many kinds of exonumia for over sixty years, much of the appeal for me is acquiring pieces that blazed historic trails. This caused me to acquire a few of Dan Carr's fantasy pieces. They're quite eye-catching to most coin collectors who've never seen one .... take the 1931-S Standing Liberty quarter for example. Then too, only a very limited number of collectors can own one. Carr's work is not only quality, its limited production and "wow factor" make it popular.

Since he overstrikes some of his coins, that takes that genuine coin permanently out of "circulation". Thus, potentially raising the price of genuine coins.

On top of the artistic merits of the pieces themselves (which are certainly not unappealing, for the most part), Dan Carr and his mintings are an interesting story, which adds to the interest in wanting to own or collect his items.
- Some of his coin designs have actually been accepted and can be found on US coinage. Very few such actual-coinage designers also produce their own series of fantasy coins/medals.
- There was the whole Amero controversy over a decade ago, when some crazy shock-jock got a hold of one of his 2007 Amero fantasy-coins and loudly proclaimed to his audience that it was evidence the government was secretly plotting to create a North American Union and replace the dollar with the amero.
- The Moonlight Mint, and it's whole "poking the bear" attitude when it comes to anti-counterfeit laws, is also attractive to the stick-it-to-the-government crowd. The novelty of making a fantasy coin by overstriking a genuine coin, using a retired US Mint coinage press, is also appealing to some.