LOOSE CHANGE: MARCH 9, 2025

 

For now, the penny survives as the smallest unit of U.S. currency — but that wasn't always the case. When the U.S. Mint was established in 1792, it made 10 denominations of coins, and the smallest was the half-cent. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton proposed the half-cent for two reasons: so America's poorest residents could buy smaller quantities of items for less money, and so merchants could price their wares more competitively in smaller increments. Average wages in the 1790s were around $65 a year, so a half-penny made sense for purchasing everyday items.

Half-cent coins declined in popularity over the next few decades, and their production waned until they were discontinued in 1857. By that time, they were mostly used by the Post Office, which still made change in half-cent amounts.

To read the complete article, see:
The U.S. used to have half-pennies. (https://historyfacts.com/us-history/fact/the-u-s-used-to-have-half-pennies/)

What appears to be an unprecedented case of doing double duty began in Washington on January 20 when Patricia (Patty) Collins was named Acting Treasurer of the United States. The treasurer has multiple functions, including liaison with the Federal Reserve, and direct oversight over the U.S. Mint, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and Fort Knox.

Ms. Collins is also the director of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing since March 24, 2024. In other words, notwithstanding that she reports to the Secretary of the Treasury, it can be said that she is her own boss. Bureau of Engraving and Printing spokesperson, Lydia Washington, told CDN, "Director Patty Collins is temporarily serving as Acting Treasurer until a replacement is named or someone is appointed to the position. She continues to perform her BEP Director duties." She is the first woman named to that position.

Because she is Acting Treasurer, she will not have her facsimile signature on the next series of U.S. currency. That will have to wait until a Treasurer is officially appointed.

To read the complete article, see:
Director Does Double Duty (https://www.greysheet.com/news/story/director-does-double-duty)

 

We know them from European castles and treasure chambers – those magnificent objects decorated and embedded with coins. We are pleased to offer a private collection of these valuable items. Throughout 2025, coin-embedded objects from the Hans-Jürgen Brammer Collection will be offered on various occasions, starting with auction 422 on 20 March 2025. The Hans-Jürgen Brammer Collection of coin-embedded tableware and coin jewelry was assembled over several decades and contains numerous treasures. Coin-embedded tableware is quite rare today. However, these items were anything but rare at the time of their creation. Only a fraction of them have survived, as most were melted down at some point. This is no cause for grief for their owners, on the contrary – it means that these objects served their original purpose.

Unfortunately, the history of coin-embedded objects has not been thoroughly examined yet. There is hardly any literature on coin-embedded objects of the 19th century. Collections such as Hans-Jürgen Brammer's could serve as a stimulus to promote research in this field.

To read the complete article, see:
Coin-Embedded Tableware as Part of European Dining Culture (https://www.kuenker.de/blog/auction-sales/numismatic-publications/coin-embedded-tableware-as-part-of-european-dining-culture/)

 

On New Year's Day 2023, my friend Matt texted to say he'd bought a Peach Bowl ticket... But what Matt had bought that morning was purely commemorative. As with almost every live event now, our actual tickets to the game only existed on our phones, and they'd disappeared along with the waning moments of 2022. The Peach Bowl had contracted with a vendor to print mementos for the game that could be personalized with your seat assignment — your own longitude and latitude for a moment immediately enshrined in the history of Georgia football. The event's organizers had advertised the service — $12 for an oversize sheet of glossy cardstock or $40 to add an acrylic display case — in the order confirmation email for the digital tickets, and Matt had dug it back up.

The ticket — the physical thing of it — used to be free, of course, or at least included in the price of admission. In my childhood bedroom a week and a half earlier, I'd come across a thick stack of them, for occasions both great and small... As objects, paper tickets serve as proof of past lives long after their brief utility as proof of payment. I sat with my accidental time capsule for more than an hour, doing what my teenage self had probably hoped I might: linking each one to a buried memory as best I could.

It's no coincidence, I think, that as paper tickets have disappeared, the merch markets for live events have boomed, or that event producers have realized many people will pay for a paper ticket printed after the fact, once they're sure the memory is a good one.

To read the complete article, see:
What We Lose When Our Memories Exist Entirely in Our Phones (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-07/the-case-for-ditching-digital-memories-for-physical-objects)

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