New Dollar Bill Coins, Yo

Okay, I've been receiving this e-mail from a bunch of upset people:

This new coin came out this month

The U.S. Mint hopes the redesigned $1 coin will win acceptance with consumers.

It does not have In God We Trust on it. Another way of leaving God out.

Send this on and let consumers decide if it will win acceptance or not.

This reminds me of the e-mail I received when I was working at the Disney Store. Apparently Walt Disney, Jr. and Microsoft were giving out free trips to Disney World. Free trips! Do you know how expensive a trip to the World is? It's crazy expensive, so who isn't going to send this on?


Me. Issue #1: There's no way to track who sent the e-mail on or who were the first 1,000 to do so. Issue #2: There's no Walt Disney, Jr.! Walt Disney had two daughters, but no sons.


See the little bits of wisdom I learned?


So, when I received the above e-mail about the new coins, I knew it had to be wrong. Mostly because I had the Martin Van Buren coin (yay! Van Buren, the successor to Andrew Jackson and that may be about it) and looked at the coin when my eyes lit on this:


Cool! It's on the side! And heck, yeah, I'm going to accept it, it's legal tender. It's backed by the government (and not much else). And they're really cool.

So, I did some research, trying to figure out the change. And I came up with this:

(10) In order to revitalize the design of United States coinage and return circulating coinage to its position as not only a necessary means of exchange in commerce, but also as an object of aesthetic beauty in its own right, it is appropriate to move many of the mottos and emblems, the inscription of the year, and the so-called "mint marks" that currently appear on the 2 faces of each circulating coin to the edge of the coin, which would allow larger and more dramatic artwork on the coins reminiscent of the so-called "Golden Age of Coinage" in the United States...

So there we go. Problem solved. Though I do carry around my John Quincy Adams (who shined better after his presidency, like the Jimmy Carter of the 19th century) coin to show my students. It's still there.