Per Newsarama :

US MINT NOT HAPPY WITH SILVER SURFER QUARTERS

So – remember the promotion where The Franklin Mint and Fox were teaming up to put 40,000 quarters emblazoned with the Silver Surfer on one side, into circulation, claiming that the quarters would still be usable as legal tender.

Yeah – well, the US Mint doesn’t agree.

Last Friday, the Mint issued a release in which it said it had learned of the quarter, and the planned promotion, and advised the studio and The Franklin Mint that they were, in fact, breaking the law. As many Newsarama posters had pondered and posited, it’s illegal to turn US currency into an advertising vehicle. Violators can face a fine.



Crazy thing is that these are already selling for more than $100 per quarter on eBay, and as much as $300 a piece! What the hell?!

Oh man, there goes my idea for the cheapest Father's Day gift ever.

Well, Hell YES I need one!!

I had the same thought when I read the headline, but it looks like they applied a sticker to a regular quarter. So you're paying money for a quater and a sticker. If you check out this quarter being sold on eBay, you'll see that it kinda looks like crap as it's farily obvious that the Surfer is just a sticker applied over a 2005 quarter. $300 for this seems beyond stupid to me.

Dayam! Some of those look worse than cheesy! Okay, I still want one, but I'll only pay 25 cents for it.

looks like kuh-rap

Thanks for the info, though!

The quarter looked like crap in person as well.

It's things like this that make me loathe collectors (even though I am one). This would be a neat novelty item... if I could get one for about fifty cents. I'm am a fan of the old flattened penny machines at amusement parks and such. You put in two quarters and a penny, and you have a neat little memento. The fact that anyone would pay more than a buck, let alone $300, for one of these is beyond me. If this was one of 40,000 actually MINTED quarters, well there you go. No problem justifying the price.

But this just goes to show that yes indeed there's a sucker born every minute.

How are they getting them into circulation? Are they drooping off rolls of them at banks or at coin stars etc? It would seem if theyre being distributed in rolls the cashier that opens the roll would easily have forty of them at once. The eBay link that is up there has a seller with more than 10 of them. If it was actually "circulated", there's no way someone could find that many. If theyredistributed in rolls, these coins will be snatched up before they're even in circulation by eBay sellers or collecters and the promotion won't work because of that.

distribution is more along the lines of "Here's a bucket of quarters. Go spend them at different stores around town"

seriously.

So is it just a sticker?

The average selling price has dropped to about $75 on eBay. There are going to be some sad campers out there in a few weeks when they realize they paid $300 for a quarter with a sticker on it.

They're comic book collectors. This shit shouldn't be a surprise. I mean, look at how much the death of captain America were selling for on that Wednesday and look at the price now.

Try unloading a copy of the death of superman these days. If anything, they should know better and be the ones selling instead of buying.