OLD COINS, OLD FRIENDS

A recent blogpost by James Lileks included a scan of a 1918-S Walking Liberty half-dollar. Worn, but nevertheless lovely. The Walker, along with the Saint Gaudens $20 gold piece, is considered by many collectors to be among the most beautiful coins our country has ever produced. But you’d never know about the rich artistic heritage of U.S. coinage if the only evidence you saw was today’s pocket change.

Maybe I’m showing my age, but I remember when interesting coins used to circulate. Seen any half-dollars lately? Up until 1964, the fifty cent piece was a routine component of our pocket change. You’d have Franklin halves and the older Walking Liberty halves as well. There was a lot more variety in the other coins we saw, too. You would see the occasional Standing Liberty quarter, usually with the date worn almost smooth. Dimes? Sure, the Roosevelt dime was out there, but you’d see plenty of the older Liberty Head (“Mercury”) dimes. And Buffalo nickels. No Indian-head pennies, but the older Lincolns with the wheat-ear reverse were still common. And once in a while you’d get a really old one in your change... WW I vintage.

Heck, one time in junior high school a kid was ready to buy his lunch with a 1903 Barber half-dollar, but I managed to swap it with him for a couple of quarters. Still have that bad boy stashed away somewhere.

And then came 1964, the coin shortage, and the Kennedy half. Almost immediately, people began hoarding the new half-dollars for their keepsake value in the wake of JFK’s assassination. With the removal of silver from quarters and dimes the following year (and the reduction of silver content in the half from 90% to 40%, total removal a few years later), Gresham’s Law kicked in and all of the silver coins disappeared from circulation... exacerbating the coin shortage. And now all of those beautiful old coins just don’t circulate any more. They’re like old friends who have moved away... and I miss them.

It’s really too bad. Our modern coinage looks like crap and the same boring designs have been in place almost forever. The Kennedy half just turned 40. The Washington quarter is 72 years old. The Roosevelt dime began production in 1946 and the Jefferson nickel in 1938. And the Lincoln cent has been around for 95 years (!) even though the new-fangled Lincoln Memorial reverse is “only” 45 years old. Of course, every so often the Mint recuts the dies for these tired old designs to improve production speed - and the coin usually suffers because the raised design elements keep getting more and more flattened.

OK, what about all these Statehood quarters and the 2004 nickels with their new reverses? Big deal. Most of the new quarters are ugly as hell, with maybe three that don’t look like they were designed by a bake sale committee. And all of them suffer from the difficulty of trying to cram too much into too small a space. How much legally-mandated verbiage and how many “artistic elements” can you stick on a coin, anyway? Feh.

But hey, just turn on “The Coin Vault” on the Home Shopping Network and you can score some of those nice cluttered Statehood quarters, layered in 10k gold or (even better!) embellished with enamel in FULL COLOR!!!

You want to see what a good coin design looks like? Take a look at the 1999 Washington $5 commemorative gold coin below. Bold, handsome profile of Washington on the obverse. Dramatic eagle on the reverse. This could have been our quarter beginning in 1932, but the design was passed over in favor of the familiar Washington quarter because the Mint Director did not like the idea of a coin created by a female sculptor (Laura Fraser). Ahhh, what could have been... it breaks my heart.


The quarter that could have been.

That 1999 Washington... the Walking Liberty half... the Saint Gaudens $20... Bela Pratt’s $5 and $2½ Indian Head gold pieces with the incused devices... the Buffalo nickel... the Peace dollar. All of them beautiful. What are your favorites?

Which of these old friends do you miss?