Author: Rajaram 'Raj' Gopalan

It’s been a while since I last posted on word of the day. Keeping in mind time is money, today’s word is numismatic. The dictionary definition of numismatic is “relating to or consisting of coins, paper currency, and medals”. When I went shopping recently, I got a Wheat Penny as change, among other coins. This penny grabbed my attention as it looked different from more recent coins. It’s a 1953 Wheat Penny. “Wheat” is a reference to two ears of wheat on one face of the coin. Out of curiosity I googled and learned that wheat pennies, also known as Lincoln Wheat Cents or the Lincoln Penny, were first minted in 1909 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. They were minted up until 1958 and feature a portrait of Abraham Lincoln on the front and wheat on the reverse.

My interest in coins piqued again after many years, I looked at the pile of coins accumulated at home over the years and also searched online for information on coin collection and what kind of coins/currency serious numismatics look for. The value of an individual coin depends on a few factors: vintage (how old it is), rarity (supply), quality (coin condition – uncirculated, mint, fair etc.), metals used (quarters minted 1964 or earlier command higher value due to their high silver content), special occasions (A bicentennial quarter, minted to celebrate 200 years of American Independence, may be valued higher than face value by folks who would love to have a physical representation of that event celebration in the form of a coin), specific defects in limited batch/batches of minted coins (For example, some 2004 Wisconsin State Quarters are valued high by collectors because of a defect that resulted in extra husk/leaf in the corn cob that’s on the quarter). Hey, I am Wisconsin-based, so it’s got to figure in this post one way or the other, right? 😂 Any coin value may also depend on another X-factor: determination of a serious coin collector to get a specific type of coin (It could be something like desire to have a complete collection, like coins of specific denomination minted in a particular decade).

Back in the last millennium (Man, I sound ancient now 🤣) when I was based in California, I bought some coins from The Littleton Coin Company. I guess I must have been interested in getting some loose change at that time 😉 I knew I had those coins somewhere in my home, but I did not remember where those coins were. I started on a quest to locate where those coins were after 25 years in my possession. 😊 After going through multiple boxes with documents I managed to find those coins. I had also bought some South Korean coins and paper currency (possibly because they were packaged well in the form of a scroll 📜) when I traveled over the Pacific to India from California with a layover at Seoul airport. A fringe benefit accrued in that process. Quite a few documents dating back up to couple of decades ago that were no longer required found their way to the paper shredder at last ✅ Among the coins I had bought were a 1900 Liberty Nickel, a 1905 Indian Head Penny, a 1937 Buffalo Nickel, a Susan B Anthony gold plated $, a Kennedy half dollar. There were couple of $ coins too, I think those coins feature Eisenhower. I then casually checked online the value of the coins that I bought or those that I retained because they were not common. Found that they were not valued much higher than their face value. I did kind of expect that. My reasoning was that if I bought a coin that was relatively easily available and did not cost me the moon there is a good chance it wouldn’t command lot of premium. That’s fine too. 👍

Moving on to other discoveries in my quest. The coins of old seem to age much better and more gracefully 👌than recent coins. Similar to well-built old homes that appear to have more character than a newer home that might have been built using cheaper materials. The quality of coins going down is to some extent understandable in the sense one of the factors in producing a coin must be the cost of producing compared to its face value. For example, a penny of today costs more to produce and buys lesser than days of yore. So, metal mix of coins are changed from time to time. State quarters started getting minted circa 1999. At that point in time, out of mild interest, I set aside a quarter of any new State aside in an attempt to have one of each State, if possible. Had not cared to follow much the changes in quarters in recent years. Imagine my surprise as I looked at the coins that were lying unused in my home to find that quarters in the past decade or so have been featuring historically significant events like George Washington crossing the Delaware river, people of significance and achievement in different fields of human endeavor like writing, improving race relations, war heroes and places of interest in different States of the country. 👏 I was surprised to discover a quarter featuring the US Virgin Islands because I had not noticed it earlier even though it’s not that rare. One of the fringe benefits of studying the coins has been discovering places of interest that have been featured in the coins and add them to potential places to visit in future. 😊

An important consideration for engaging in an activity for me, be it building or fixing things or pursuing as a hobby like growing plants or collecting coins, is being able to do it on my own. Meaning, with no little or no external dependency or needing another person. Of course, for building something I would still depend on the instructions. For fixing something I may still look for a youtube video. Activities indoors also have the added advantage of being able to do on a bad weather day at home when outdoor activity may not be possible. My rummaging through coins accumulated over years may not have yielded a million dollars but I got more than $50 when I got those deposited in the bank where I used the coin sorter. 👍 Hey, one extra penny is 100 x one million times closer to a million dollars 😊 By getting back those coins in circulation I might have contributed my little bit to reduced mining for metals as more supply = lesser new production. That matters too! 🙏