Final campaign lap starts

Both major political parties have selected their standard bearers. Barack Obama and Joe Biden represent the Democrats. John McCain and Sarah Palin represent the Republicans.

Today we are sending out a newsletter where we ask the recipients if it will make any difference to the hobby which presidential candidate wins in November.

Columnist David Ganz reports that though both candidates have supported numismatic legislation from time to time, neither one seems to have any significant record one way or the other on hobby-related matters.

Naturally collectors pay attention to who will become the Treasury secretary because it is his facsimile signature on American Federal Reserve Notes. There will be a new Treasurer of the United States as well, who signs to the left of the Treasury secretary.

Both will change no matter who wins and that virtually guarantees a new Series date of 2009 for notes.

A new Mint director is in the cards. The position is one of the political plums that are handed out to a supporter of whoever is President rather than a party loyalist, so even if the political party does not change at the head of government in November, the person in the chair likely will.

All of these changes are interesting to those of us down at the collecting level, but there are other more important questions. Will we get more new coins or fewer? Will the value of the dollar go up or down on foreign exchange markets? How will that affect gold and other precious metals? I am sure you can think of others and will be paying attention to the campaign over the next two months.