Photos and text used with permission and courtesy of Heritage Rare Coin Auctions

Description:The rare so-called “Cheerios” variety, made from a prototype (some would say pattern) reverse hub with fine detail on the eagle’s tail feathers. The regular issue Sacagawea dollar has smooth tail feathers. All known examples of this variety (except for a few gold pieces that took a trip on the space shuttle) have come from Cheerios cereal boxes, which helped the U.S. Mint promote the new Sacagawea mini-dollar. Only one in a hundred of the boxes contained a dollar coin.

The coin above was recently auctioned by Heritage in the March Phoenix, AZ (ANA) Signature Auction #1102 lot # 1274 for the record price of $23,000

NGC announced the “discovery” coin in this 6/22/2005 article;

“NGC Certifies Pattern Sacagawea Dollar”

On Monday, June 20, 2005, NGC certified a pattern 2000-P Sacagawea Dollar struck from dies made with experimental hubs. While similar to the final design, the reverse’s eagle device shows considerably greater detail than that seen on circulation and proof issues struck from the adopted dies and is very easy to identify. The story of this coin is emerging as one of the most fascinating numismatic discoveries to come to light in some time, as this coin can be distinguished from virtually every other pattern coin of the twentieth century in an important way – a relatively large number of 5,500 were produced and then dispersed through non-numismatic channels.

The tale begins with a marketing campaign that sought to promote the re-issuance and redesign of the dollar coin. The US Mint undertook a mass market media blitz. They popularly dubbed the coin the “golden dollar” and partnered with many companies to raise awareness of the new coin. Although primarily a millennium celebration, one such promotion was conducted with General Mills. A single example of the first 10,000,000 Lincoln cents struck bearing the date 2000 was included inside every marked box of Cheerios that year. One in every 2000 boxes included a cent coin and a Sacagawea Dollar. According to a General Mills promotional release, “during the month of January, the only place to get either coin [was] in a box of Cheerios.” We know this is true statement regarding the Sacagawea Dollar, as it was not released to Federal Reserve Banks until January 26, 2000, and Wal-Mart (another company participating in promotional distribution) did not release them until January 30, 2000. (more…)

Photos and descriptions used with permission and courtesy of Heritage Auction Galleries

As World War II got underway, it quickly became obvious that massive quantities of copper and nickel were needed for the war effort. As a major industrial user of both metals at that time, the U.S. Mint began to look for alternative compositions for the cent and nickel coinage. In 1941, the three operating mints coined 1.1 billion cents and 300 million nickels. Eliminating copper from the cent coinage, reducing copper from the nickel coinage, and eliminating nickel from the nickel coinage would result in a savings of more than 4,000 tons of copper and 400 tons of nickel, based on the 1941 coinage.

Several companies were involved in development and testing of experimental compositions as replacement for copper in the cent. Much of the experimentation involved various plastic materials, hard rubber, and even tempered glass. At the same time, the Mint was looking into various metallic alternatives, including this white metal piece and zinc coated steel patterns, the latter currently unknown.

Patterns struck inside the Mint utilized the existing Lincoln cent dies, while the outside companies were provided with special dies feature a female head facing right for the obverse, and UNITED STATES MINT inside a wreath for the reverse. (more…)