Attitudes change toward golden dollars?

When the first Sacagawea dollar coin came out in 2000, the Mint liked to call it a Golden Dollar.

Each new one that is struck as well as each new Presidential dollar coin continues to have the alloy that is a nice bright golden color when it is new.

How the public and collectors have treated these coins has been anything but golden.

Aside from a few people who were confused initially into thinking that golden somehow meant they were made of gold, nobody got too worked up about the new coins.

Is that changing?

The government’s decision to scale back production of Presidential dollar coins to levels that will only fulfill collector demand seems to have ignited a re-evaluation in the minds of the public about the dollar coin. The Mint has had to go back to the presses to make more Presidential dollars when demand exceeded supply for the first designs of 2012.

This added demand is likely to come from two sources.

Promotion houses love a good story. A curious public can be more easily persuaded that something is scarce and desirable when they cannot get it at their local bank.

Collectors, ever aware of mintages, are now assured that numbers will not be so high as to forever depress prices. It might still be unclear just what might constitute a scarce Presidential dollar mintage total, but getting us all to think about it is a triumph of sorts.

If we think something might end up being scarce, we get into a “take no chances” mode and we acquire it.

After all, you never know.

Future generations might fall in love with the coin. Even this skeptical generation of collectors might.

What do you think? Have you re-evaluated you views of Presidential dollars this year?

Buzz blogger Dave Harper is editor of the weekly newspaper "Numismatic News."