Countermarks Create Instant Rarities
Adding a countermark to an existing coin offers a quick way to commemorate an event, and the small mintages can create instant rarities collectors scramble to find.
The United States Mint announced a countermarked half dollar to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks on our homeland. This isn’t the first countermarked coin released this year, but it illustrates nicely that we have finally found a way to commemorate an event with a coin on short notice.
When Princess Diana died in a Saturday night auto accident in France in 1997, Derek Pobjoy, master of the privately owned Pobjoy Mint, called his coin designers into the office on that Sunday to feverishly design a commemorative on short notice. Pobjoy succeeded and was the first to issue a coin marking her death, this being before the competition could even begin planning their designs. No one else, to my knowledge, has tried to rush a totally new coin design on short notice to mark an event quickly after the event has happened.
Pobjoy had the advantage of having permission from other countries to strike coins using their name. The U.S. Mint doesn’t enjoy that same advantage. Considering the number of countermarks being added to U.S. coins this year, I think the U.S. Mint has found the answer.
There are benefits beyond simply being able to mark an event on a coin on short notice. Many of these countermarks are instant rarities. This, in turn, is catching the eye of both the collecting and the previously non-collecting markets. There is the danger of people speculating these countermarks into a bubble that will pop; however, at the moment it is almost a feeding frenzy to find those so-called instant rarities.
The long-term results may not necessarily be that many new collectors enter the hobby, but that since countermarks can be issued on short notice, the news and propaganda advantages coins have enjoyed in the past appear to be back with a modern twist.
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