2000 Cheerios Dollar - 2000 Prototype Golden (Sacagawea) Dollar, FS-902

by: Dr. Ron Brown   |   Saturday, August 21, 2021   |   0 Comments

2000 Prototype Golden (Sacagawea) Dollar, FS-902

By Dr. Ron Brown

With rare exemption, I always write about coins I own. This article is no exception and from my ownership, I observed and learned a few things that I feel should be said again about this rare and very desirable variety.

Business Strike Reverse: note smooth appearance of neck and tail    Prototype Reverse: note feather texture of neck, wings and tail

The year 2000 – the New Millennium was planned with much fanfare.  If you recall there were the dooms day prognosticators who foretold of the end of the world using the Y2K title to warn. Do you recall the computer tech guys who said all our systems would crash due to the computers and their programs only using two digit year designators and the New Year 2000 was never planned for? Even our appliances were supposed to fail. In Health Care, my profession, health departments around the country was forcing the industry to plan for major outages and make alternative plans and file a strategic plan with them. With rare exception all the planning and concern resulted in “Much to Do about Nothing”- a real a waste of money and precious time.

But one big change did realize – the United States Mint introduced a New Golden Dollar with the goal of the American populace embracing it over the old paper dollar bill. Great effort was put into place to make this a reality. TV ads ran, promotional items were issued, all with the goal of the public to embrace these new coins. By early January 2000, this being before they were available anywhere else, Walmart, Sam’s Club and the General Mills partnered with the U.S. Mints promotion and had the coins for distribution. Federal Reserve Banks did not begin shipping the coins until January 18, 2000. However this was not the only promotion as the mint partnered with many large retailers to issue the new “Golden Dollars” in change. Within this promotion, General Mills placed one Lincoln cent in every box of Cheerios and a Sacagawea dollar and cent inside every 2,000th box of the same. One detail not often mentioned is that in every 4,400^th box, there was a certificate redeemable for $100 in the New Golden Dollar. I have always wondered if some of these might have been of the prototype variety.  An excerpt of the Mints press release is here below:

U.S. MINT'S FIRST MILLENNIUM COINS AVAILABLE INSIDE BOXES OF CHEERIOS

First Year 2000 Pennies and Dollar Coins in All Six Cheerios Brands This Week
Minneapolis, January 5, 2000 - The Millennium will arrive in mint condition - literally! Ten million newly minted Millennium Pennies - the first Lincoln cents stamped with the year 2000 - will be distributed inside boxes of all six varieties of Cheerios. The 10 million cereal boxes containing the Millennium Penny will appear on store shelves across the United States beginning this week.
Since general circulation of these coins is not expected to begin until February, this historic offer gives Americans a chance to get the new coins before they're widely available.
In addition to the penny, every 2,000th participating box in the Cheerios franchise will include one of the brand new, highly anticipated one-dollar gold-colored coins - the Golden Dollar - featuring the image of Native American heroine Sacagewea. Plus, every 4,400th box will contain a $100 prize in the form of a special certificate redeemable for 100 of the new Golden Dollars.

With the late discovery in 2005 of this Sacagawea variety, FS-902 - today not many collectors recall these cereal boxes

During the delivery of the coins, being sealed by the mint on the cards – obverse side up, any difference would not have been noticed on the reverse or down side. The inserted coins dated 2000 were placed on a card, obverse side up and shrink-wrapped – thus in keeping with the promotion of the year 2000 which the coins all showed. For some reason, the black card decorated with images of 2000-dated cents and dollar coins carry the “S” mint mark used on proof coins which neither of these coins would have. The packaging was titled “Cheerios”, and this moniker has been attached to the coins ever since.

Close-up of some of my coins

It was then in 2005 that Tom Delorey noticed the reverse was not like the general circulating dollars but in fact had more detail, especially in the tail feathers of the eagle.

Business strike 2000 reverse tail detail

Prototype 2000 FS-902 tail detail

The history of this coin starts late October in 1999 when designer (Tom Rogers), of the already finished reverse dies, reports that a design change was recommended to make the tail feathers and the head/neck area on the Bald Eagle look white by reducing the reverse surface detail in those areas giving it a smooth lighter appearance – more representative of the white head and tail of the Bald Eagle. Mind you, the mint at this time had already produced coins for the General Mills promotion – but likely not all. With the change, all subsequent business strike dollars thereafter were produced with this modified reverse die, but the already planned 5500 coins to be supplied to General Mills were already in the pipeline.

NGC in April 2008 was then to certify a coin in MS67, calling it a pattern 2000-P Sacagawea Dollar struck from dies made with experimental hubs. Experimental is not exactly  right - rather these were early hubs intended for business strike coins  but changed later on due to a mint recommendation and thus why the bulk of the 5500 coins have this reverse. Said another way, 5500 coins are not an experiment. Experimental suggest that a design was not yet chosen but in this case the prototype reverse was chosen - just changed later on. 

While most Sacagawea Dollars found in the Cheerios promotional packaging were struck with a prototype reverse, in some instances regular issue coins have been found. Reports circulated that coins that were still in original packaging were being submitted for certification and were NOT the prototype variety. But of course, in the original packaging the reverse was not visible so how could one tell?  PCI was first to slab a coin in early 2005 from a Cheerios packaging and NOT of the prototype reverse, but it is said that no one took serious notice. PCGS announced May 16, 2008 that it also received coins in original packaging – unaltered, that were "non-prototype" Cheerios Dollars. Therefore, the total number of these coins that were struck is unknown and LESS than the reported 5500 making it even rarer that the reported mintages. It was then again that Mr. Delorey was able to examine multiple examples in their original packaging along with certified examples that he noticed an obverse diagnostic that held true for coins of the prototype reverse.