The Silver Surfer Quarter

Via Businesswire:

This summer, silver is the new gold standard — for movies, with the June 15 release of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, and for movie promotions, as Twentieth Century Fox and the Franklin Mint join forces to create an original limited collector’s edition “Silver Surfer” U.S. quarter that will challenge movie goers to Search 4 $ilver[sic].

I was outraged when I first read of this, and was going to call for someone to be fired over it. Seriously, advertisements on our money?

But then I saw the super high-resolution photo of the reverse, and it’s pretty clear that it’s just a bog standard California state quarter with a (bad 4-color process) sticker printed over it. The ‘8’ from ‘1850’ is clearly visible on the Silver Surfer’s head:

Compare with the standard California reverse:

So it’s just a stupid marketing gimmick. Yay Hollywood, I guess.