"Pre-searched at Boxing, No silver"

I think the Ike was made with the gaming industry in mind.

 

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Dang! If I was offered a box of coins that had that stamp, I don't think I'd waste my time looking through it. That must have been depressing. lol

 

If that's true, I wish the gaming-industry lobbyists would get off their duffs and push for a new line of (non-PM) $5, $10 and $20 coins...

 

Atlantic City wasn't gaming until near the end of the Ike run. I don't think Vegas needed the Ikes as they would have to have new machines designed to accept the Ike, as the old machines that took Peace dollars and Morgans were probably obsolete by then. And those coins were 4 grams heavier.
When I worked at several casinos in Colorado in the 1990's they all had individual dollar tokens made for their own casino. They were all able to fit in the other casino's machines as they were made by the same company and had to be the same size and weight to fit all the same machines in the different establishments.
One woman had a cool job she would buy the "other" casinos tokens from each place at a slight discount and then sell back the correct tokens to each place (at face?)

 

I'm going to be talking to Tom D later and I will ask him about this.

He was writing for Coin World among other during this time.

I'll see what he remembers.

 

I sent a reply before that I found 17 Walkers & 3 40% Kennedy's in a box of 1,000 from my bank. WOW , next box did not have any Silver at all. Sometimes you get lucky doing this HUH rON w.

 

Tom was kind enough to respond when I ask him if I was correct in my belief that the government came out with the Ike dollar in part to mollify the gaming industry.....

His reply:

Definitely. When the Treasury ran out of silver dollars to distribute, and the 1964-D Peace dollars struck in 1965 (which might have helped the casinos for just a short while, until the price of silver rose a bit more) were remelted, the casinos had their own dollar tokens struck by the new Franklin Mint.
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The Treasury objected, but the casinos said "Unless you can give us dollar coins we have to use dollar tokens." The Treasury might have issued 40% silver dollars then, but the Coinage Act of 1965, which authorized the copper-nickel clad dimes and quarters and the 40% halves, specifically banned the striking of dollar coins for five years. That was just a little political gotcha aimed at the Treasury for having struck the 90% silver 1964-D silver dollars in 1965.
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When the five year ban expired in 1970 the Mint began work on a new dollar coin with the general understanding that some were destined for the casinos. They were authorized at the end of 1970 by an omnibus amendment to a Banking act that, among other things, changed the composition of the half to copper-nickel, authorized a new dollar in both copper-nickel and 40% silver, and transferred some three million mostly CC dollars to the GSA for disposition.
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Ike had died in March of 1969. The Apollo 11 Moon landing was in July of 1969, and the world was still buzzing about it. The Apollo 11 shoulder patch design was chosen for the reverse of the new dollar.
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I have heard that Ike was picked for the obverse because he had signed the authorization for NASA back in the late 1950's. I have also heard it said that the Republican Congress and President Nixon wanted another Republican on the U.S. coinage, along with Lincoln, to balance out FDR and JFK. Nixon had served as VP under Ike, so in my opinion Ike was a logical choice. I liked Ike.