I've been trying to formulate my opinion on the Braille dollar for awhile now. I have an aunt who lost her sight as a teenager (60+ years ago), and we had talked about it and the idea of Braille money as well. Her opinion was that she hasn't dealt with money herself in so long, she doesn't care whether they make audio-enabled cash
But I really do think there should be something done with cash to enable blind people to handle it themselves. Probably won't happen since plastic seems to be the way of the future (increasing prices on everything by 1-2% because of processing fees - the reason I use cash money as much as possible.
Anyhow, here's my long-winded thoughts on top of long-winded thoughts:
1) The commemoratives rarely do much of anything in terms of value appreciation. There's been a couple in the 90's, but really, they're fairly stable from the time they come out.
2) Part of the reason for that is that they seem to have the right mintage number down, where there's enough to go around, but not so many that they don't maximize profits for the mint and the contribution for whatever the cause is.
3) #2 being said, if this one doesn't sell out, it'll rank on the lower end of commemorative mintage in recent years. That word gets out, and eventually it might give it a little pop...but probably not much
4) I considered this as well...its the Braille dollar, even being sold in an option with an easy-open capsule. Certainly, a portion of these are being bought by or for a blind person, who is likely going to want to feel the coin. Feeling UNC and Proof coinage generally doesn't help its grade ; ) So the top population may be additionally shrunk.
5) Referring to #4 - so by how much? Well, everyone seems to be referring to the coin as unattractive, probably why it hasn't sold much, even though it has the same mintage limit and silver content as the Lincoln, so it could be a fairly significant number which are shipping to blind people (100,000 sent to blind people who read Braille and want to touch the coin wouldn't shock me at all, especially since many of them, even if non-collectors, would be more likely to have heard about the coin.
Anyhow, I almost passed it up, and for the past few years, I've been getting at least one of each commemorative, sometimes bunches (a big box o' Bald Eagles, and a little stack of Lincolns, because I really loved both of those). Thinking about it more, I think its time to go ahead and order 2 each, proof and unc. 1 each for the collection, and 1 each "just in case" there's some signficant value.
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