Did you ever wonder if the Anthony dollar could have been made more ugly? Wonder no more....

Ugly? One of my Favorite modern designs.

@RogerB said:
In a follow-up letter, Engraver Gasparo was asked to eliminate the olive branch as being too complicated.

Too complicated? Seriously???

That is a coin I simply cannot enjoy..... I do have some, somewhere....although, I have since thought that the SBA, as an ugly dollar coin, set the bar for new dollar coins - and not in a good way. Cheers, RickO

@RogerB said:

@AmazonX said:

drugged eagle landing on an asteroid

Asteroid? I always thought it was the moon. This makes the eagle much more bad ass! USA! USA!

Was being sarcastic. I one looks at any photo of the moon from the late 1960s the features are sharp and crisply defined. The Ike/Anthony reverse is blurred, mushy and a nondescript mess. Rather than a bold, confident eagle, the coins have a fuzzy, drugged-looking bird unsure of its target.

All the archival letters indicate that Hackel was entirely supportive of this mess. Gasparro certainly did nothing to improve the situation, and the workmanship is similarly weak on the earlier Liberty version. (Just opinions and worth every cent...)

My guess is the mint probably took the same artwork that was used on the Ike Dollar and reduced it with a loss of detail. I never viewed that side as the Anthony Dollar to be that bad. It certainly was easier on the eyes that the obverse.

So far design changes go, I wonder if things would have been different if one of the pattern designs, like the "sailor obverse" had been used for the Twenty Cent Piece. Probably not. I think that the similarity in size, instead of the designs, did the Anthony Dollar and the double dime in. I remember what happened to the last Anthony Dollar I had in my pocket. I mistook it for a quarter, based upon size, and donated it to a charity bucket!

Susie is older than she looks.

Susan B. Anthony, Cleopatra VII

Yes, that Cleopatra, the seducer of Caesar and Mark Antony.

I like the SBA. I give them to my son from the tooth fairy when he loses a tooth. I tell him that only the tooth fairy has these, knowing he will never see one in circulation. Makes it all the more real.

Used an Ike dollar, a Sacagawea, and Susan B. to buy something today. The girl mistook the SBA for a quarter. I had to explain to her that this is why God made plastic surgeons. Should have paid with my card.

I like them, have several sets. but I started in 1979 when they came out. they were odd

@dcarr said:

@RogerB said:

@AmazonX said:

drugged eagle landing on an asteroid

Asteroid? I always thought it was the moon. This makes the eagle much more bad ass! USA! USA!

Was being sarcastic. If one looks at any photo of the moon from the late 1960s the features are sharp and crisply defined. The Ike/Anthony reverse is blurred, mushy and a nondescript mess. Rather than a bold, confident eagle, the coins have a fuzzy, drugged-looking bird unsure of its target.

All the archival letters indicate that Hackel was entirely supportive of this mess. Gasparro certainly did nothing to improve the situation, and the workmanship is similarly weak on the earlier Liberty version. (Just opinions and worth every cent...)

You can't blame Gasparro and the US Mint for the design on the Apollo 11 mission patch.
https://nasa.gov/feature/the-making-of-the-apollo-11-mission-patch

Good link Dan. It's nice that team members made their own patches and good to read about the thought process behind the Apollo 11 patch. I like how they picked an eagle, chose not to have their names on it, and went with Arabic numbers instead of Roman ones to make it more accessible. I also didn't know the eagle was traced from a National Geographic book about birds, "Water, Prey, and Game Birds of North America."

I like the Ike dollar, but there are still some differences between the Apollo 11 eagle by Michael Collins and the one by Gasparro. The change that stands out to me the most is that the coin's eagle's beak doesn't look bird like in that there's no curve downwards at the tip or change in angle from the top of the head. For comparison, Gobrecht did a good job on the eagle beak on the Gobrecht dollar. I'm still a fan of the Ike dollar overall, but the eagle's head is a head scratcher for me.

The stars on the reverse are a nice touch for coins, but I also think it would be interesting to imagine the reverse without the stars for a cleaner image like on the patch, similar to how the Gobrecht dollar comes with and without stars.

Here's a comparison of the Apollo 11 patch with the Ike dollar reverse:

@BillJones said:
I remember what happened to the last Anthony Dollar I had in my pocket. I mistook it for a quarter, based upon size, and donated it to a charity bucket!

@erickso1 said:
I like the SBA. I give them to my son from the tooth fairy when he loses a tooth. I tell him that only the tooth fairy has these, knowing he will never see one in circulation. Makes it all the more real.

On the flip side of mistaking SBAs when spending them, I wonder how many people receive SBAs in circulation but just treat them as quarters.