I could be mistaken but I seem to remember the promotional material on the website advocating trying to "pass" the coins at the USD equivalent of their face value without necessarily explaining that they were not government issued currency. By early 2008 the 1 oz silver coins were being issued as $50 denominations, far in excess of the market price for silver at that time ($10-20 over 2008) and a little more than even the recently set ~20 year high of $48.XX (it's around $40 today.) It's also worth noting that "associates" got the coins for 2/3 the price. http://web.archive.org/web/20081217005130/http://www.libertydollar.org/

Imagine receiving one of these as payment for something later in 2008 believing it to be a government issued coin and discovering later that the "$" face value was essentially meaningless: the issuer was no longer willing exchange it to USD  at any price (http://web.archive.org/web/20081218121525/http://www.libertydollar.org/ld/faqs/convertibility.htm) and the silver in it was only worth $10, a fifth of the face value.