Coin Series: Eisenhower (Ike) Dollars

Ike Dollars are an interesting set of coins.  The last of the large dollars, the series only ran from 1971 to 1978.  The 32 coin set consists of 16 business strike clad coins, 6 clad proofs, 5 40% silver business strike, and 5 40% silver proof coins.  1971 P&D Ikes and 1972 P&D Ikes were only available in rolls and bags while the 1973 coins were issues in mint sets only.  1971 -1974S business strike silver coins were issued seal in plastic in a blue envelope while the silver proof from those years were in a hard plastic case that came in a brown box. In 1976, the U.S Mint issues 2 bicentennial 40% silver sets, one uncirculated and the other proof.  These came with an Ike dollar, Kennedy Half, and Washington quarter.  The series ended in 1978 to make way for the Susan B. Anthony small dollar.

Thinning Out My Coin Collection

In my quest for completeness, I accumulated a large amount of coin albums that I "HAD" to fill.  Not only did I try to fill the labeled holes, but I bought blank Dansco pages to add early proof and the satin mint set coins from 2005 -2010.  My the collection I was building was fairly nice, but I started running into several problems.

The collection was growing too large.  The space required to properly store my coins kept growing.  This included needing to keep purchasing new albums and totes to store them.  Next brings the issue of weight.  Everything was getting too heavy.  It was a chore to even look at my albums.  Pulling out all of my bins and find the albums I was looking for was too much.  I didn't even want to look at the coins anymore.

Ike Crazy!

A couple of years ago, I was on a roll finding U.S. Mint Sets for below face value on eBay.  Worst case, I could cut up and spend the coins for a profit.  I ended up doing that to many of the coins while I built nice collections of some and sold others.  Below is a photo of Eisenhower (IKE) Dollars I purchased for about $0.80 each.  Several of these are still in my collection today.

My Commemorative Silver Dollar Set

With all of the additional finishes of coins coming out, I decided to forgo the madness and stop participating in these releases. I've been down this road years ago when I collected Baseball Cards. Too many versions of the same card to keep up with and the values kept falling because there was a never ending sea of product.
I wanted to take up a new project and since the RP coins are made as collectible version of "circulating" coinage, why not look at a series whose intent was made as just a collectible and not intended as currency. I liked the look of some of the Commemorative Silver dollars and prefer the uncirculated finish to the proofs. Most of the Unc coins have a dramatically lower mintage compared to the proofs so that was the deciding factor.