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Money
© By Abraham Lincoln
Whatever happened to the Half Dollar coin? I keep looking for them when
I get change but they are all being hoarded or the banks no longer give
them out.
My father-in-law used to hand out Two Dollar Bills at Christmas. He
always made a trip to the local bank to get the bills he was going to
hand out each year. We still have those he gave us and the bills were
issued the year we were born.
Before I retired in 1976, my pockets were usually full of change. If
there were too many half dollars I’d have to either wear suspenders or
a belt to keep my trousers up.
Most of us have collected coins and while my collection is small, I
still get the coffee can out and check the current selling prices on
E-Bay to see how much money I could sell individual coins for.
Do you remember the stories about the new Sacagawea One Dollar Coin?
According to our government, they were going to save a ton of money and
put the paper printing presses out of business as soon as people
adopted the new dollar coin.
But like so many things the US Government does, the dollar coin was an
immediate flop. People, like myself, found we were giving a dollar coin
out instead of a quarter. In spite of the fact that the
government said it fixed that so there would be no confusion, they
still managed to make the new dollar coin almost identical in size to
the quarter. But, just to make sure, they added a series of flat spots
along the edge of the coins so you could feel the difference when you
held on in your hand. I have not seen one of these in circulation
in years.
The US Mint makes tons of coins nobody uses. They make them in all
precious metals including gold, silver and platinum. And the ones
Americans get in change are not even solid anything but are clad in
something that looks like silver but isn’t and the middle is copper or
something with copper in it.
To me it is like the “steel” penny we got during World War Two. I still
have a few of them but after all these years they are not worth a penny
more than they were when they were first introduced.
The few coins that I have are change from a dollar bill that I got the
last time I was out and bought something.
Fortunately, for me, I don’t have any shopping compulsions and my
change ends up in a couple of puke trays the hospital issued to me that
last few times I was there for my collapsed lung or my aneurysm repair.
If I won the lottery, I’d be at a loss as to what I’d use the money
for. I guess I would pay off the houses my kids are buying and then set
them up with free groceries for a year—or something like that.
After that—and the rest? I’d buy all sorts of stuff I really don’t need.
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