Post the neatest coin fact you know!!!
PutTogether
Posts: 2,141 ✭✭✭
Alright, lets build a thread that can be looked back on a year from now and half people new to coins (and some not so new) reading it and saying "wow, coins are neat!"
Can be relatively common knowledge or incredibly obscure.
Can be dry fact, or a neat history of a particular coin.
I'll start.
Sometime in 1894, John Dagget, who was then director of the SF mint, gave three 1894S Barber dimes to his daughter. It's not known exactly how many were made, but some guess apprx 24. He told her to keep them safe, as they'd someday be worth money. She proceeded to spend one on ice cream!!!!
Interestingly enough, the rarest of all Barber coinage that was spent on ice cream was later recovered from circulation.
Can be relatively common knowledge or incredibly obscure.
Can be dry fact, or a neat history of a particular coin.
I'll start.
Sometime in 1894, John Dagget, who was then director of the SF mint, gave three 1894S Barber dimes to his daughter. It's not known exactly how many were made, but some guess apprx 24. He told her to keep them safe, as they'd someday be worth money. She proceeded to spend one on ice cream!!!!
Interestingly enough, the rarest of all Barber coinage that was spent on ice cream was later recovered from circulation.
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Comments
Jeremy
PS- that's 1984 and 1987 respectively
Perhaps this explains why I spent more on a nice PCGS MS-65 Cincinnati half dollar last year than on any other single coin in my collection.
However, conspiracy nuts went crazy when the J.S. appeared there. People actually thought they stood for Joseph Stalin, the Russian leader. There was talk of some sinister plot and a salutation to Stalin. While the communist Russians were our allies in the war, they immediatly became our enemy as the cold war began as soon as the shooting stopped.
It created such a stir that a few years down the road, the mint decided to make sure the rumor wouldn't start up again with the minting of the Franklin half and included the designer's middle initial, thereby eliminating any possible connection to Stalin.
The designer's name was John R. Sinnock who, obviously, was also the creator of the obverse of the Frankln half dollar.
John Marnard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, 1920, page 235ff
<< <i>When the Roosevelt dime came out in 1946, shortly after FDR's death and the end of the Second World War, the designer's initials were included on the obverse as is typical.
However, conspiracy nuts went crazy when the J.S. appeared there. People actually thought they stood for Joseph Stalin, the Russian leader. There was talk of some sinister plot and a salutation to Stalin. While the communist Russians were our allies in the war, they immediatly became our enemy as the cold war began as soon as the shooting stopped.
It created such a stir that a few years down the road, the mint decided to make sure the rumor wouldn't start up again with the minting of the Franklin half and included the designer's middle initial, thereby eliminating any possible connection to Stalin.
The designer's name was John R. Sinnock who, obviously, was also the creator of the obverse of the Frankln half dollar. >>
I had never heard that one before. Thats EXACTLY the kind of thing im talking about.
The cincinati coin story, while I have heard it before, is nevertheless very interesting. Anything for a profit.
He'd enter a store, buy an inexpensive item, and lay down one of his gold-plated nickels in payment. Invariably, the shopkeeper would return change for $5, believing it was a $5 gold coin. But after some time, the authorities caught up with Josh Tatum and he went to trial on fraud charges.
Tatum's lawyer asked each shopkeeper who testified if Tatum had asked for change for $5. Each time, they said Tatum had not. As it turns out, Tatum couldn't have - he was a deaf-mute. The court ruled that it was the shopkeepers who made the error and Tatum got off. But before the year was out, the Mint had revised the design to include the word CENTS.
And Josh Tatum's little escapade was the origin of the phrase "I'm just joshing you."
New collectors, please educate yourself before spending money on coins; there are people who believe that using numismatic knowledge to rip the naïve is what this hobby is all about.
Nickle - definition from gcide
Nickle Nic"kle, n. (Zool.)
The European woodpecker, or yaffle; -- called also nicker pecker
.
[1913 Webster]
Hell, I don't need to exercise.....I get enough just pushing my luck.
West Point in the late '70's for circulation. Mint marks were not used.
Retired SMS dies were apparently used for much of the San Francisco
production.
This coin has been the work horse of commerce for two generations.
Semper ubi sub ubi
Semper ubi sub ubi
From the small diameter and thickness of the coin it was found to be exceedingly inconvenient, and the act of March 3, 1865 authorized the coinage of the 3-cent nickel piece."
-Horatio C. Burchard, Director of the Mint, 1879 Annual Report to the Secretary of the Treasury.
Joe
For proof of this, go here: cent puzzlement
and they're cold.
I don't want nobody to shoot me in the foxhole."
Mary
Best Franklin Website
When the mint switch from the Large Cent and Half cent in 1857 to the small cent (flying Eagle), I heard the Mint offered a " 2 for 1" deal, meaning trade in your large Cent for 2 small cents and trade in your half cent for a small cent. This was supposably done to smooth the acceptance of the new small cents that were smaller than the "old" half cent. I don't know how long this program supposably lasted, but sounded like a novel idea to me to foster acceptance of the new small cent.
True or not, I do not know.......
If I had it my way, stupidity would be painful!
The world record for a single coin sale is upwards of $7,000,000!
The designer of the U.S. Peace Dollar (DeFrancisci) roughly modeled the image of Ms Liberty after his new young wife. He posed her in front of an open window to get the blowing effect in the hair.
(Source: the VAM book)
<< <i>The reason the eagle is so small on the reverse of the Franklin half is because the designers weren't aware of the law requiring the depiction of the eagle on the back of all coin denominations of twenty-five cents and above. It was added as an after-thought to comply with the law. . . >>
Ah, yes, but the reason it was even considered for omission was that Franklin was opposed to the eagle as our national bird, in fact he preferred the turkey. But then again, he was also opposed to putting human portraits on coins and favored wise sayings instead. I'm thinking he may not have been too happy with this Franklin Half!
E PLVRIBVS VNVM
Mr. Brenners initals were returned to the lower reverse of the cent Jan. of 1918, a few months after Barbers death.
This is one of those "You know, I used to believe that, but now that I say it out loud, it doesn't make any sense" neat coin facts.
Apropos of the coin posse/aka caca: "The longer he spoke of his honor, the tighter I held to my purse."
Louis Armstrong
in the form of Sacs struck on specialy prepared planchets. She had them attributed and
encapsulated by ICG and sold about 3,000 of them at $200 each.
Need more $$$ for coins?
Did you know the U.S. built a mint in The Dalles, Oregon? That's the most obsure fact I know.
Great transactions with oih82w8, JasonGaming, Moose1913.
In 1987 Canada's currency underwent a major change with the introduction of "the loonie," that country's new gold-colored one-dollar coin. The loonie was created to replace the one-dollar bill, which was to be removed from circulation through attrition; worn-out dollar bills would continue to be destroyed, but no new stock of paper currency would take their place. Canadians were given one year to become accustomed to the metal dollar coin, then the Bank of Canada ended distribution of one-dollar banknotes, leaving the loonie supreme.
Prior to 1987, Canada's silver dollar coin featured two men in a fur-laden canoe, a depiction of the voyageurs who had dared the wilderness in that country's early days. When Canada decided to replace one-dollar bills with one-dollar coins the 1935 Emanuel Hahn "voyageur" design was adapted for the new coin, but something went awry -- the master dies of the new one-dollar coin were lost in transit.
The dies, which had been produced in Ottawa, were being shipped to production facilities in Winnipeg. According to an investigation conducted by the Royal Canadian Mint, they had been entrusted to a courier service on 3 November 1986 and were never seen again. The dies' being sent by courier was in itself a breach of accepted security procedures (transport of the dies should have been handled by a high-security outfit such as Brinks), but there was more. No one had asked the courier company representative who had appeared to take possession of the package for identification. And both dies, the obverse and reverse of the new coin, had been bundled into the same shipment, meaning that whoever had the package also had the dies for striking both sides of the new coin. (The two sides should have been shipped separately to rule out this possibility.)
Although the Royal Canadian Mounted Police assert the dies were merely lost in transit, others believe they were stolen by folks intent upon minting their own money. With this possibility looming, the Mint undertook to redesign the coin to foil potential counterfeiters. They had an alternate Robert-Ralph Carmichael design featuring a loon on hand and quickly gained government approval for its use. Dies were cut, and the gold-colored dollars were loosed upon the Canadian public on 30 June 1987, meeting the schedule for the release date of the original "voyageurs" coin.
The subject of the coin's design prompted its own nomenclature. Canadians quickly dubbed the new coin "the loonie," and that name has stuck through the years. Piggy banks became "loonie bins." In 1996, the "toonie" joined the loonie in the pockets of Canadians as a new dual-metalled coin took the place of the two-dollar bill. Also known as "the queen with the bear behind" (Queen Elizabeth II on one side, bear on the other), the toonie gained its name from a combination of "two" and "loonie."
The loonie, by the way, might be gold colored, but it contains no gold. It is made of aureate bronze plated on pure nickel.
It's true!
It really is true!
On another note which I'm not 100% sure is true, the pennies made in 1944 and 1945 contained copper which was recovered from spent ammunition collected during the war. This may just be a rumor, but I haven't heard otherwise so I'll believe it until I'm disproven.
Eastside
The Ludlow Brilliant Collection (1938-64)
That's just a very short summary of the whole story. I am in the middle of reading "Illegal Tender" (about the '33 double eagle) and that's one of the interesting facts I've picked up so far.
collections: Maryland related coins & exonumia, 7070 Type set, and Video Arcade Tokens.
The Low Budget Y2K Registry Set
Cool thread BTW
The reason the eagle is so small on the reverse of the Franklin half is because the designers weren't aware of the law requiring the depiction of the eagle on the back of all coin denominations of twenty-five cents and above. It was added as an after-thought to comply with the law. . .
I read something along those lines, but it was moreso to the tune that, Benjamin Franklin disliked Eagles, and often expressed his distaste for them quite extensively. He opposed the eagle as the national bird and much preferred the Turkey. They weren't originally going to include the eagle on the coin, however, every coin above a dime must have an eagle, so they put a supersmall one on there, to meet the laws.
-Daniel
-Aristotle
Dum loquimur fugerit invida aetas. Carpe diem quam minimum credula postero.
-Horace
First - Thomas E. Kilby on the 1921 Alabama
Second - Calvin Coolidge on the 1926 Sesquicentennial
Third - Carter Glass on the 1936 Lynchburg
Fourth - Joseph Robinson on the 1936 Arkansas-Robinson
Last and Ugliest - Eunice Kennedy Shriver on the 1995 Special Olympics
The Mint Act of 1890 is most often cited for the fact that is gave the Treasury the sole authority and discretion to change the designs on coinage every 25 years. Little known, however, is that it also gave the Mint the opportunity to change the design of the silver dollar. During that time, the Morgan dollar was seen as a misfit in American coinage. George Morgan was viewed with contempt inside the Mint (due to the Barber legacy) because he was considered an "outsider." Barber likely left the dollar alone in order to aid acceptance of his new designs for Liberty on the minor silver coinage, which included the full head profile of Liberty. The Mint Act of 1890 also gave authority to change the design of the five cent piece, then the Liberty design of Barber. With Barber ensconsed as Chief Engraver, however, nothing was done about the nickel.
Hoot
Heres the rub,the nickel and the 5 dollar gold were the same size.
Drunks would put 1/2 eagles in the slots thinking they were nickels.
Mr Fey had enough cash to rebuild his factorys !
<< <i> If you swallow a coin, it will reappear in less than 48 hours. >>
You better believe, however, that it'll be artificially toned and will hopefully be bodybagged by the TPG's.