First Strike Coins - Misleading Marketing?

One thing about us coin collectors: if we think a coin is somehow rarer, more desireable, or better than others like it, we're willing to pay more for it. There is clear evidence of this in the trend towards cataloging minor die varieties. Statehood Quarter varieties are selling for silly amounts of money; Morgan Dollars are no longer just "Morgans," now many of them are VAMs, too.

Knowing all this, why should we be surprised to see designations such as "First Strike" on the labels of our slabs? Now, the coin doesn't even need to have a die variety to be "special." It just needs to made first.

Errr, uh, wait a minute. The "First Strike" designation has nothing to do with when the coin was made. Doing a little research into this subject, I learned that not even the U.S. Mint can tell which coins were made when, because they don't keep records of this once the coins have left the production facility. So why are grading services giving coins a "First Strike" designation, when nobody knows when a given coin was made?

That is the question our guest author, A.C. Dwyer, owner of the #1 NGC Registry Set The Arlington Collection, has undertaken to answer. His conclusions might surprise you, when you find out that there may be nothing more special that a misleading marketing campaign behind the "First Strike" designation.

Photo of "First Strikes" label courtesy of NGC.