Collecting Friends: Coins That Pop

Coins That Pop

Dennis: It was the third day of the 2025 ANA National Money Show. I was strolling the bourse in Atlanta’s Cobb Galleria Centre. I’d given my “Money Talks” presentation on U.S./Philippine coins a couple days earlier, and attended a few other talks. I’d had meetings with authors and publishers and other friends. Now it was time to take in the exhibits and see what interesting collectibles I could find on the bourse.

As I walked, my eye was drawn to a corner display case packed with pop-out coins—a remarkable collection! As I leaned in for a closer look, coin dealer Bob Campbell appeared out of nowhere and told me, “I put that case there to draw people in!” Well, it worked. 

[Image: Pop-out coins will catch your eye.]

Bob was on his way to meet a friend who was attending the show, but he stopped to open up the case for me, and gave me a quick history and tutorial on how pop-out coins were made. He walked me through some of the more extraordinary pieces. (They were all pretty cool.)

Years ago, Katie Moller de Silva (then writing as Katherine Jaeger) and Q. David Bowers included an entire chapter on cut-out, enameled, and pop-out coins in their Guide Book of United States Tokens and Medals. I fondly recalled working on that book (with two of my favorite Whitman authors) as Bob shared this impressive collection of “pops” at the ANA show.

When I worked for Whitman, my schedule at ANA shows was nearly wall-to-wall meetings, book signings, and presentations, every minute accounted for, with very little free time to go table to table and look at dealer inventories. Sometimes I did find myself with a free half hour or so. I got in the habit of “scanning” rather than immersing . . . walking up and down the aisles and pausing only if an unusual sight caught my eye. That would often be large medals, maybe patterns or other uncommon coins, anything distinctive.

Steve, when you’re on the bourse, what kind of things make you stop and take a closer look? 

Steve: I have an appreciation for a kitsch aesthetic. (Oxford dictionary definition: art, objects, or design considered to be in poor taste because of excessive garishness or sentimentality, but sometimes appreciated in an ironic or knowing way.) I, too, look at coins that have been modified outside of the U.S. Mint to scratch that visual itch. 

I’m not sure if our editors at the ANA will permit me to write about this – but I get a kick out of any “potty dollar.” These are most often circulation strike Trade dollars from 1873 to 1878 where the Seated Liberty figure, normally draped in heavy draped clothing and seated on bales of merchandise with a sheaf of wheat at her back, is transformed by an engraver into a usually nude lady on a commode. A particularly ambitious example of the type popped up at a Heritage auction in 2023, where the “artist” decided to remove the sea at Liberty’s feet, replacing it with perspectival lines suggesting bathroom tiles. Liberty holds her olive branch and the ribbon in her hand that once said LIBERTY has been turned into a towel of sorts. (Sometimes she reaches with that hand for toilet paper, with the olive branch turned into a toilet paper roll, providing an added touch of class and nuance). The bounty of goods supporting her has turned into a curved handled pot and her hair and headpiece remain intact. The end result is odd – with Liberty’s legs, normally concealed by her garment fully exposed – and by all assessments it is tacky and lowbrow. It’s the numismatic equivalent of a poster of dogs playing poker. 

[Image: To create this high-relief effect, legal-tender coins would be die-embossed with a design under extreme pressure.]

[Image: Also called repoussé or “pushed out” coins, pop-outs were often used to make watch fobs or other sartorial accoutrements. These examples all show martyred presidents.]

[Image: Steve always stops for a “potty dollar” on the bourse floor, even if they are in bad taste. Image courtesy of Heritage Auctions.]

Be on the lookout for another installment of Collecting Friends next month or subscribe here and never miss a post! In the meantime, explore beautiful coins from the ANA's Edward C. Rochette Money Museum Virtual Exhibits.

About the Collecting Friends Blog

Hello! And welcome to the ANA’s blog series, “Collecting Friends.”

We decided to approach this much like a conversation between friends. One of us starts with a topic, then the other responds. Simple as that. Along those lines, we’ll keep the tone conversational as much as possible. 

We both write about coins professionally, and will keep our relative style guides in our writing. For Dennis, former Publisher at Whitman Publishing, that means capitalizing “Proof” and italicizing Red Book and never saying anything bad about Ken Bressett, who’s awesome anyway. 

For Steve, who’s written with Coin World for 15 years, it means Winged Liberty Head dime instead of “Mercury” dime, and similar nuances and oddities. And, it means writing A Guide Book of United States Coins (better known as the “Red Book”). 

Both of us started collecting when we were little, introduced to coins by a chance encounter with an old coin that sparked our curiosity. One of Steve’s interests is coin valuation, and he gravitates towards the intersection of art and coins. Dennis enjoys medals and world coins, and studying modern U.S. coins in the context of older series, what came before.

We met in 2012 at the American Numismatic Association World’s Fair of Money in Philadelphia at an event hosted by the Austrian Mint where there was both a Ben Franklin and a Betsy Ross impersonator. We’ve become great friends in the past decade. We even were appointed together to sit on the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee starting in 2016, but Steve resigned soon after he was appointed to accept a full-time job at the Treasury Department while Dennis was re-appointed in 2020.

We taught a course together on numismatic publishing and writing a few years ago at the Summer Seminar, and while life has gotten in the way of us teaching another class, we jumped at our friend Caleb’s suggestion that we write a column. We hope you enjoy it! 

About the American Numismatic Association

The American Numismatic Association is a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating and encouraging people to study and collect coins and related items. The Association serves collectors, the general public, and academic communities with an interest in numismatics.

The ANA helps all people discover and explore the world of money through its vast array of educational programs including its museum, library, publications, conventions and numismatic seminars.