"FOREVER COIN" IDEA

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V24 2021 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 24, Number 38, September 19, 2021, Article 12

Here is an idea for a forever coin, which marries the sister hobbies of coin and stamp collecting. Carrying all of the required coin writing, the obverse is representative of the United States Mint while the reverse is representative of the Postal System. Like a Trade Dollar, it carries no numerical domination, the value is FOREVER, based on the first class rate.

It is not simply for buying stamps. It is money just like quarters, dimes, nickels etc. It can also be spent over the counter. At 32 mm, it will not fit into a vending machine. It will go up in value just like forever stamps. It is something inexpensive that you could carry around as a good luck charm, makes a great stocking stuffer and in a pinch before payday, since it is money, it could come in handy if you are just a little short. It's easily replaced, just like buying a stamp-but you can't spend a stamp even though it has a value.

The edge can be like the 50 cent euro coin with wider reeds making it appear like perforation. This coin will be added to coin sets at face value plus costs. Both the Mint and Postal symbols are quite beautiful and would make a very nice FOREVER coin. There has never been a fractional coin that goes up in denomination.

Well, the idea of a Forever stamp was a head-scratcher for me when it first came out. A Forever Coin would be the inflation-proof bond of small change. In a time where interest rates are so low there's talk of negative rates on the horizon, where would a Forever Coin fit? Would retirees and hedge funds buy them up in quantity to protect their cash investments from inflation?

Clifford Mishler's Coins: Questions & Answers discusses the connection between stamp prices and the trime. Here's the relevant section published recently on Coin Update. -Editor

"Have you seen the episode of Seinfeld where Kramer and Newman were taking bottles to Michigan to redeem them for ten cents? The idea of investing in the forever coin wouldn't work. Not really. I considered that. But if the price of postage went up two cents and you had ten of the coins you made twenty cents. You would need literally truckloads of the coins and you would have to wait until postage doubled to a dollar ten before you could say you made any money. Warren Buffet won't be filling his train cars with them. Warren isn't buying up train loads of forever stamps either.

"However, I love the concept of this coin, and the two beautiful designs. And like a combination 1851 three cent piece when postage went down to three cents, and a Trade dollar with no denomination on it, the forever coin is unique, a coin that will go up in value, a fractional coin at times, and maintains its value. Postage doesn't generally go down but even when it does it always goes back up.

"I'm interested in what your readers might think of the idea. I found a coin with the postal seal on it and it's pretty cool. It's a 2004."