Every Day Is Special: coins

Showing posts with label coins. Show all posts

December 13 - A Real, Historical WOMAN - on MONEY!!

Posted on December 13, 2021

This is an update of my post published on December 13, 2010:

Have you ever thought about the design of money? Somebody gets paid to decide whose face appears on coins and bills, and what words and other pictures adorn the two sides. Somebody gets paid to decide on the size and composition and color of coins.

And sometimes those somebodies make mistakes.

The Susan B. Anthony dollar was the first U.S. coin to present a portrait of a real woman. On the reverse side, a picture of an eagle flying over the moon honored the Eagle lander of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Susan B. Anthony was a hero in the cause of women's
rights - especially women's right to vote!

What not-so-real woman appeared on earlier coins? Answer below.

Today is the anniversary of the production of the Susan B. Anthony dollar, in 1978.

This coin was one of the most unpopular coins in history. Many people got one or two and stuck them away as keepsakes—but then avoided getting or using the coin any further. In other words, the coin barely circulated. Why was it so unpopular?

It was almost the exact same size as a quarter, and it was silver like a quarter.

Coin designers wanted to make the coin different by making it an eleven-sided coin rather than a round coin—a hendecagon—but vending machines would have had a difficult time with a non-round coin, so the designers just drew the hendecagon picture on the obverse and reverse sides of the coin and used the same reeded edge used for quarters.

With the same size, color, and edge as quarters, is it any surprise that the coin was easily confused for quarters? People didn't like being confused, and they lost money every time they made a mistake with the new coin—again, is it any surprise the coin was unpopular?

Four quarters makes a dollar...
But...wait!

Even the U.S. Mint had problems distinguishing the “Susie Bs” (as collectors refer to the coin) and quarters!

The Susan B. Anthony dollars were only minted a few years.

Do you know the design on the next dollar coin, released in 2000?

What made that coin different from quarters (and Susie Bs)?

Answers:

What not-so-real woman appeared on coins earlier than the Susan B. Anthony dollar?

Lady Liberty.

There have been quite a few coins that feature
Lady Liberty - and she has looked very different
from coin to coin!

The latest version of Lady Liberty is Black.

Do you know the design on the next dollar coin, released in 2000?

Sacagawea and her baby on the obverse, and an eagle on the reverse.

What made that coin different from quarters (and Susan B's)?

Gold color and plain edges.

More...

Interested in coin collecting? Get some info here.

Also on this date:

Republic Day in Malta

Artist Emily Carr's birthday

Anniversary of a prophecy

by Dickens

Saint Lucia Day in Scandinavian countries

Anniversary of Tasman's “discovery” of New Zealand

Anniversary of the invention of Simon Beck's Snow Art

Anniversary of the last (so far) Moonwalk

August 29 – Copper Coins, Way Back When!

Posted on August 29, 2018

Japan's first coins were officially minted on this date in 708.

They were made of copper and had a square hole in the middle, not unlike the coins minted by the Chinese in the 600s.

We know that China was making golden coins in the 200s, and there is some evidence that both China and India were creating coins way back in the 7th Century B.C.E.

Note that I said "some evidence" - apparently we don't have any oh-so-ancient coins from these earliest Chinese and Indian coins. But we DO have actual coins that were created by the Lydians way-way-way back in about 600 B.C.E. Because of this direct evidence, some scholars don't mention the probability that China and India separately, at around the same time, invented coins - and instead they simply state the Lydians invented coinage!

This map shows three probably origins of coins.
Lydia, on the leftmost (westernmost) side of the map,
is where Turkey is today. India and China are the two
other places where coins are thought to have been
independently invented.

The earliest Lydian coins we know about were made of electrum, which is a naturally-occurring combination of gold and silver. The coins were not of standardized shapes and sizes but were standardized according to weight, so they may have been weighed rather than counted. Of course, having standardized shapes and sizes - and having flat coins - makes it possible to stack them, sort them with machines, and (in the case of round, flat coins, invent coin slots and vending machines)...

Here are some questions I had about coins...

Are all coins round?

No. In addition to many different roundish-shaped - but not perfectly circular - ancient coins...

...There were ancient coins that were of radically different shapes, like these spade- and spear-shaped coins.

And, in more modern times, there have been squarish, flower-shaped, 6-sided hexagonal, 12-sided (almost round) dodecagonal, and other shapes of coins.

And how about these right-now Chinese fan-shaped collectible coins?They're designed to encourage you to buy "the complete set," since all of the fan-shaped coins fit together to make - you guessed it! - a circle!

Why did Chinese and Japanese coins have those central holes? And why were the holes square?

Apparently, after the coins were cast and cooled, coin makers would string the coins on square rods and then were able to use a rasp to smooth the edges of many coins at once. If the holes and rods were round, the coins wouldn't stay in place for scraping and smoothing.

Even though this practical reason probably tells the entire story, there is also a theory that, inChinese mythology, the round shape of the coin represents the universe, and the square shape of the hole represents the Earth (then believed to be a square) or China (the Chinese character for "country" is surrounded by a square).