Attention Numismatics Fans

Due to the increase in price of certain base metals relative to the US dollar, specifically zinc, nickel, and copper, it's now profitable to melt down US coins. For instance, the penny now increases in value by 74% if you scrape Lincoln's scruffy mug off of it. Consequently, Congress is expected to require a substantial redesign of our coins in 2007 by the US Mint. I wonder, will we get something like those little euro pennies that certain countries only minted in nominal amounts (Finland, the Netherlands) and a nickel that isn't irritatingly huge in light of the number I need to carry in my pocket if I want to use them on the bus? And then get glared at by all the other passengers as the driver sits at the curb waiting for me to feed 20 honking coins into the tiny slot.

Unfortunately, the Mint are the people who've released two dollar coins which continue to fail to circulate, and locked up ONE MILLION DOLLARS worth of Susan B. Anthony coins for fifteen years just to piss off any surviving suffragettes (and possibly because it was a stupidly designed coin). The Sacagawea dollar incurred all the transition costs of updating machines to handle the coin and funding those metrosexual George Washington ads where he's out clubbing and too hung over to pay your cab fare in the morning, or something, and of course no savings since the treasury continued to print $1 bills anyways. And yet the only place it's encountered is when you buy a subway ticket with a $20 and miss your train waiting for all 18 gold coins to clink down the change slot one by one, because nobody but public transportation and the post office are secure enough in their monopoly to give it out as change.

The really nefarious element of all of this was a bill quietly passed by Congress last year that I like to think of as the "How can we put W on money?" act, even though that's a paranoid misrepresentation of its contents. In addition to Sacagawea, who will appear on a third of all gold dollar coins, a series will be minted of every US president. To be on it a president has to have been dead at least two years when his turn comes up, making the Clinton dollar less likely, although they are counting Grover Cleveland twice, no doubt to extend the amount of time before W's coin comes up. Seriously, can you imagine how angry the foreign visitors who already complain about homogeneous US money would be if he was on it? Many previously unrecognized contributions to the Republic will be honored this way, such as shipping military weapons to the Confederacy in 1860 (Buchanan), standing around in the cold without a coat on (Harrison), and possibly being involved in your boss's assassination (Arthur).

The presidential $1 coins will only be issued 4 presidents a year until they run out of presidents, at which point they'll either make Sacagaweas or scrap the whole thing. The second option seems more likely, since every time they issue a new coin to replace the $1 bill, they keep printing the bills so nobody actually makes the transition. What's needed is some sort of expert on numismatics and finance, a person who has in his or her mind fused those two topics so completely he or she is able to for instance seamlessly tie together modern finance with ancient Roman coins. Alas, if only such a person existed.