For goodness sake, Jefferson, stop moving around!
Posted by Bob the Hamster on April 5th, 2006Current mood: numismanic
I was at the grocery store buying milk and bananas, and when I payed, the nice little robot that helps the cashier dispense the change gave me some coins. One of them caught my eye immediately. It was different. I immediately singled it out, and started babbling about it to the cashier, (delaying the line of people behind me) and nearly left without taking my groceries with me. Jefferson’s face had moved to a different place on the Nickel!
Now pretty much exactly the same thing happened months ago at a different grocery store, last time Jefferson moved.I tell you, this guy on the Nickel was a great founding father and all, but he is dead! Dead presidents should have the common decency to stop moving! It is spooking me out!
Besides being a little bit scary to see this face moving around the coin, I feel like it weakens the coin. I know the State Quarters were a big hit, but that was the backs of the coins, not the fronts. Now you could counterfit any slug of metal, and as long as you got the size right, it would not matter what picture you put on it, I would be willing to believe it was a legit coin.
I guess they don’t really care about coin counterfitting. Our currency has inflated enough that coins aren’t worth much of anything anymore. It would cost far more to fake tham than what they are worth. You know pennies are not made of copper anymore, right? Copper is way too valuable for that. Copper is extremely important for microchips and for wiring, and for all sorts of other important industrial uses– and there is a fixed amount of it available on earth. There will be no increase in the available global copper supply until after asteroid mining becomes feasable.
Perhaps that is why Abe Lincoln has been holding still. He is Thinking about the Future!