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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;CaptHenway, post: 8477848, member: 13813&quot;]The pieces sent to General Mills were not a test run. I believe that it was the 5,500 pieces needed for the promotion. However, it is known that some coins found in the original promotion packages do not have the prototype reverse. It is also known that when the Sacagawea dollars first came out in quantity, a lot of them had spotting problems. </p><p><br /></p><p>I suspect, just as a guess, that General Mills rejected some of the 5,500 coins due to spotting and requested replacements, which came from the normal dies. If this happened, the rejects may have been returned to the Mint and melted, or they may have just been released as normal coins. Remember, at the time nobody knew there was anything different about them.</p><p><br /></p><p>After the prototype reverse was confirmed, I happened to meet Tom Rogers, the Mint Engraver responsible for the reverse design, at an ANA convention. He told me that while he was still fiddling with the reverse design the Mint&#039;s Marketing Dept. worked out the deal with General Mills, and the Marketing Department had the Coining Dept. run off a batch of coins from the latest design dies for shipment to General Mills. Those dies had the designs used back in April or May to strike a few dozen 22kt gold pieces (on gold Half Ounce American Eagle planchets) for launch into space.</p><p><br /></p><p>The Coining Dept. did not know, or care, that Rogers was still fiddling with the designs. Rogers did not know that the Coining Dept. had struck coins for release to General Mills. Rogers said that because he wanted the eagle to more closely resemble a Bald Eagle, he took out the detailing of the tail feathers to make them plain because in Heraldry a plain, blank space is representative of white.</p><p><br /></p><p>(Take a look at the shield on a Draped Bust, Heraldic Eagle Dollar. The horizontal lines at the top represent the color blue. The multi-lined vertical stripes represent the color red. The plain spaces between the red lines represent the color white.)</p><p><br /></p><p>The only detail he left in was the center spine in the central tail feather, just for artistic purposes. Instead of leaving it raised he depressed it, again for artistic purposes. He also fiddled with the detailing in the wings, but I do not know why.</p><p><br /></p><p>Once he was done he ordered the production of Master Dies and Hubs and Working Dies and Hubs and mass production of the coins for release starting January 1, 2000. The Fed was not anxious to be bothered with them because of concern over the Y2K situation, so the Mint&#039;s Marketing Dept. worked out a deal with Walmart for them to buy 100,000,000 pieces to give out in change starting in January. I got some at Walmart and noticed the design change. The Fed started shipping them to banks in February.</p><p><br /></p><p>TD[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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