Some coin collectors are fucking annoying. Every week in one of the newspapers I subscribe to, there'll be one letter by a reader and his most wonderful idea for a US coin overhaul. Sometimes they'll describe their awful design ideas but others will take it further and suggest either adding or removing denominations or both and others still will suggest composition or size overhaul (or both).
I can tolerate both the first and second groups. I honestly don't think there's a coin collector out there who hasn't fantasized about issues they would like to see or what could have been based on patterns made at the mint. Some speak a bit too highly of themselves and their ideas, but whatever...more power to them.
The last group I simply don't get at all. Compositionally, okay, I get it: The nickel is overvalued; it has been for several years. Inflation has made it impossible to maintain a cupronickel coin that is 75% copper and 25% nickel by weight. Congress should be open to suggestions to make a new alloy for the coin. Some suggest cupronickel plated steel (like Canada's coins). The main problem I see with that is vending machines and change counters which use magnets to detect foreign matter and coins. It would impose significant costs onto these industries to adopt such a composition. I don't understand metallurgy but if a cupronickel plated zinc coin is feasible, perhaps they ought to try that. No magnetic problems and the zinc industry would certainly be happy and would also keep their business going in the event of the discontinuation of the cent. Our current cent, though nearly worthless, does not exceed its face value metalwise though I do believe shipping costs can push its value over a cent. I'm sure it's long since passed when the cent should have been abolished but like every coin collector, I started on the cent and my fondness for it to this day forbids me to consider its abolition. I much favor a deflationary policy on the part of the Federal Reserve rather than lose this historic coin (made every year since 1793 except 1815). All the other coins come in well below their face value in terms of their metal value and should not even been considered for composition change and yet both collectors and occasionally officials such as the now former Mint Director Moy suggested changing their metals to something cheaper. A dime only has 3¢ worth of metal in it --- how much cheaper do we need to go? It's fine!
The ones who want size changes though, piss me the fuck off. I mean, really? *mocking tone* All the other countries have their 5 unit coins smaller than their 10 unit coins so why don't we? *end mocking tone* First of all, no they don't. Even with their precious Euro, the 10 eurocent piece is smaller than their 5 eurocent piece. For those of you who don't know or don't care, the reason the dime is smaller than the nickel (and penny) is because back in the day, coins dimes, quarters, half dollars, and dollar coins were made out of silver and the amount of silver they contained was proportional to their value. Even half-dimes existed at one time and those...were tiny coins. The small cent (they used to be bigger prior to 1858) and the nickel were debased coins containing less than their face value of metal but circulated anyway because they bore the imprimatur of the United States government and people accepted that as enough. And originally, small cents were only legal tender up to 20¢ so merchants needn't worry about assholes dumping a bag of them on their counters in payment. If you had a lot of cents, you would go to a moneychanger who would give you silver and/or gold for them, but at a discount. That way, cent production was kept under control unlike today with a combination of inflation and unlimited legal tender status (1965 coinage act, yay!), cent production is enormous and generally accounts for half of all coins made in this country aaaand of course, leads to assholes paying you with a fistful of them because they can. If you could only use no more than five in a transaction, maybe people wouldn't let them build up in jars for quite so long.
The big deal I have with changing coin sizes besides being a traditionalist, is that, because of the Coinage Act of 1965, all US coins were affirmed to have legal tender status regardless of when minted. That means, although you would be foolish to do so, you could spend a 1793 chain cent (the first issued by the US) as a cent to this day. It also means that older coins can still be found (on rare occasions). Other countries have suffered numerous revaluations or in the case of England, decimalization, which removes older coins from circulation. If you live in most of Europe now, the oldest coins you will find are dated 1999 and that's because many countries adopted the Euro and eliminated their national currencies. It kind of happened here when silver was removed from circulating coins. The older silver pieces were quickly plucked out of circulation leaving only a few different dates for a while (Canada's government does this as well removing the older nickel coins from circulation to melt them down at a profit causing the majority of circulating Canadian coins to be dated later than 2000). But their sizes remained intact despite the composition change which allows for occasional appearances of older coins in circulation. The United States is one of a tiny handful of countries where it is possible (however unlikely) to find coins over 100 years old in your change. The bookkeeper in my store just the other week got a 1905 Liberty nickel. I myself got an 1895 Indian Head cent once and other workers in my store have seen older (an 1889 and 1864 bronze cent to be specific). A customer showed me a Barber quarter he got one day (minted between 1892 and 1916). That simply cannot happen in other countries and that's because the United States puts out a consistent product. The quality and value of that product have certainly gone down over the years, but tradition has reigned supreme.
So that's basically it. I don't want our coins to change in size because it allows for occasional surprises in my coin rolls at work and while roll searching generally produces nothing of note anymore, I don't see how one can call himself a coin collector knowing that remains possible to this day.
No comments:
Post a Comment