I'll start off with a commentary on the current status of US coins, as compared to their history...
One of the things you notice if you examine coins from other countries and other times, is that is is usually easy to tell the difference between coins of a republic and those of an authoritarian regime. In short, republics tend to issue coins with generic images, or images of general significance to the population, while authoritarian regimes tend to issue coins with an image of the ruler.
Interestingly, US coins have slowly drifted over the past 200 years away from the types more associated with a Republic, and towards the types associated with an authoritarian regime.
The first leader's visage placed on a common US coin, was the Abraham Lincoln cent, in 1909. This replaced the Indian Head cent, which showed an Indian chief. All the remaining coins were replaced with ones showing a leader or were obsoleted over the next 40 years. The Thomas Jefferson nickel replaced the Buffalo. The "Mercury" head dime lost to the Franklin Roosevelt dime. The Standing Liberty quarter became the George Washington quarter. The Walking Liberty half dollar became a Benjamin Franklin half, and then the John Kennedy half dollar. The Peace dollar became the Susan B. Anthony, and then the Eisenhower dollar. The gold coins, bearing more or less generic images of indians or personifications of liberty, were obsoleted.
Does anybody find this as disturbing as I do? Why is it that the "Father of our Country" wasn't honored with a general circulation coin until 1932?
I believe that the answer is that the founders already knew what to expect on a British (or Spanish or French) coin: An image of the King, with a legend in latin around his head.
Authoritarian states first put their leaders on coins a long time ago. When Jesus said to "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" he was referring to the fact that most Roman coinage had the leader's visage imprinted on it. Coins were minted with Alexander the Great's image for a long time after his death. But the coins of the Greek and roman republics had generic images on them. Athena wearing a helmet, a horse with wings, a boy riding a dolphin, various gods, Romulus and Remus sucking on the she-wolf, etc.
Now the mint is allowing the individual states to replace the reverse of the George Washington quarter. Each state gets 1/5th of a year's mintage. I bought a Dansco album so that I could collect these, and have found two (from circulation) so far, the Deleware-D and the Pennsylvania-D.
-- Carl |
