After all, dinosaurs did rule the world for 160 million years...
Have you noticed that some of these come pre-tarnished? I suspect that the U.S. Mint doesn't do too good of a job rinsing them off. This leaves some residue that reacts with the copper in the coinage, creating tarnish.
If you dissolve about 1/4 teaspoon of salt in about 1 cup of vinegar, then dump all of your doubloons...er, I mean, Golden dollars, into the mix and stir them around for a few minutes, you'll find that your dollars are nice and shiny again.
The vinegar and salt solution dissolves the tarnish (and also removes a thin layer of the metal--don't leave the coins in for too long. About 2 minutes should be more than sufficient).
I rinse the coins using about 1 tsp of baking soda dissolved in 2 cups of water to neutralize the vinegar, then rinse the coins several times in water to remove the sodium (which is also corrosive).
Pat the coins dry (or put them in the toaster oven set on low for a few minutes), and put them away in your treasure chest, or spend them, or whatever.
Incidentally, according to the U.S. Government, the Golden Dollar coin weighs in at 8.1 grams, which amounts to 5.2084 pennyweights. Now, assuming that a pennyweight was actually the weight of a penny long ago, this amounts to quite a bit of inflation...
Did you really think I'd let you get away without some form of unit conversion???
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