“Cheerios” Variety Sacagawea Dollars

The U.S. Mint has tried several times in the modern era to produce circulating $1 coins that would circulate widely, especially since they last so much longer than paper money. Long before the failure of the Presidential $1 coins to circulate, there were Susan B. Anthony dollars that consumers felt looked too much like a quarter and were also not popular because of the obverse design that was not the most flattering image of the famed suffragist.

And then there was the Native American dollar launched in 2000, which also never caught on with the public despite making them a golden color so they would be easier to distinguish from quarters. The coins are however quite popular with collectors.

The Mint was determined to get them circulating and launched an extensive publicity campaign for the coins, including television commercials, and a deal with Coinstar in which customers who brought in $20 in change would receive two of the new coins free. Also, Wal-Mart agreed to help distribute the coins in change.

But the promotion that really made numismatic history was the one with General Mills, which in January 2000 placed them in boxes of Cheerios cereal along with newly minted 2000 Lincoln cents. And 1 in every 2000 boxes also included a new, 2000-P Sacagawea dollar (the name the Native American dollars now go by). Most of those coins went to consumers who probably just though they received a free dollar and spent them, and it did not help that they were placed in holders obverse side up, which did not reveal that the reverse is not the same type as the one that would be used on millions of the coins that went into circulation from January 26, 2000.

What we only learned five years later in 2005 thanks to numismatic researcher Tom DeLorey and others is that the dollars in the cereal boxes were actually test or pattern pieces struck in the late summer or early fall 1999 prior to regular production that began on November 18. They were made while the Mint was still conducting tests of the design.

The so-called “Cheerios” variety, or Reverse of 1999, Sacagawea dollar has much greater detail on the tail feathers on the eagle that appears on the coin’s reverse including “raised central feather shafts and numerous veins,” according to Scott Schechter and Jeff Garrett, compared to the final design that has an incuse shaft.

It was later revealed that the Mint produced 5,500 of this experimental variety but to date only a small number of the coins have surfaced. At PCGS to date only 142 coins have been graded, and at NGC even fewer with just 17 graded.

In 2017 when the 4th edition of 100 Greatest U.S. Modern Coins ranked the coin #12 (from #14 in the first edition), a total of about 60 coins had been graded by the two services

It’s possible others have been found but not send in for grading, but it seems clear that many of the coins remain to be discovered.

PCGS values the coins at $3250 for an MS65+, $6750 for an MS67+ and $11,500 for the top grade of MS68. One sold at auction in 2020 for $10,200. NGC calls the coins prototypes.

Back in 2008 when the coins had only been discovered three years earlier and a much smaller number were known, several examples sold at auction for between $23,000-32,000 each.

In addition, not all of the coins distributed in the cereal boxes were of the rare variety, so fewer than 5,500 of the coins exist.

But that conflicts with what the Mint said in a July 17, 2017 statement indicating that 5,500 coins of this variety were made and shipped to General Mills for the promotion. The statement further indicated that before coins were made for release to the Federal Reserve in 2000, “The feather detail was softened, and the center tail feather was recessed to solve a die manufacturing issue. Recessing the tail feather gives the illusion of a 13th feather, but that was not the intent.”

In 2018 it was reported in Coin World that one amazingly lucky Maryland collector managed to find three examples of this rare coin, two in cereal boxes and one in a roll of dollars he got from a bank.

According to a 2015 post on the NGC boards: “When I spoke to former Mint employee and reverse designer Tom Rogers about the change, he told me that after minting the dollars for General Mills, the Mint discovered that ‘the reduction rings were wiping out the tail feather details in the dies.’ So these details were removed before any more dollar coins were struck, leaving all future Sacagawea dollar eagles with less detailed, flat tail feathers.”

The first-year coins from 2000 also happen to be ones with the highest mintage and those that are known for various other special varieties, including the famous mule coin that paired a Sacagawea reverse with a Washington quarter obverse. Then there are the 5,000 that were given to the coin’s designer Gleena Goodacre that have a different finish and the 12 examples of the 2000-W dollar that were struck in gold and flew aboard the Space Shuttle in 1999.

Sources:

https://www.coinworld.com/news/us-coins/collector-finds-three-sacagawea-cheerios-dollars.html

https://boards.ngccoin.com/blogs/entry/10424-ten-years-since-the-quotcheerios-dollarquot-discovery/

https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/cheerios-dollar-profile-768545

Sam Gelbard, “Cheerio Mate!,” The Numismatist, March 2022

Scott Schechter and Jeff Garrett, 100 Greatest U.S. Modern Coins (Whitman, 2017)