When I received a promotional mailing from a local Honda dealer, I was upset.
It was a large post card with one of those cardboard credit card offers pasted on it. It had my name on it. My address was on the post card. I was worried someone could have taken the card off and applied for a credit card with it.
Also, the promotion wasn’t clear. It said you could win a $5,000 credit card, a plasma screen TV, or a gold collectable coin. Did that mean you could “win” the opportunity to apply for a $5,000 credit card or would you get a “credit card” with $5,000 on it that you could spend?
I scraped off the silver coating on the winning numbers and wasn’t surprised to find out that I’d “won.” My numbers matched those under the coating.
I kept the promotional piece so I could stop by the Honda dealer one day when I was in the neighborhood and ask questions about it.
What I found out surprised me. The $5,000 hyped in the mailing was actually a prize. The winner would receive a “credit card” with $5,000 on it. After the Honda salesman told me I didn’t win a big prize, he went to get my coin.
I was flabbergasted when he reappeared and handed me a coin. It was a gold-colored Andrew Jackson $1 coin.
“It’s gold and it’s collectable,” the salesman said.
I laughed.
The Andrew Jackson $1coin is the third presidential dollar issued in 2008 and the seventh since the series began in 2007.
The coins are made from pure copper with a manganese brass outer clad.
As to whether the Jackson $1 coins are “collectable,” people who like to collect coins, such as the quarter-state series, probably will be collecting these gold-colored coins in the presidential series.
However, about 50 million of the Jackson coins have been issued and millions more will be in the future. It’s doubtful if they’ll be worth more than $1.
The coins have been issued because the government hopes to save money by cutting back on people’s reliance on paper bills, which last about 18 months on average.
Coins can remain in circulation as long as 40 years before they wear down and must be withdrawn, making them a better value.
So what do I think about the Honda dealer’s promotion? It was misleading. And for the salesman to tell me that the coin was “gold” was a fabrication and that the coin was collectable was a stretch.
