A Coin's Life

That was beautiful, Sap. You are a man with many talents.

Great stories!

I was almost never born. My country Canada was governed by another country, Great Britain, who ruled over yet another country called India. They were very proud of this, and put their king's portrait along with "King Emperor" or "Emperor of India" abbreviated in Latin ("IND: IMP"), on the coins of all their countries. Well, the story goes that India gained independence from Great Britain in 1947, and so in 1948 there was great consternation about continuing to designate their king, who was called George VI, as emperor of India, when he was not.

The problem was that they had to redesign the portraits for the coins of all these countries, but The Royal Mint in Great Britain was the only one who did this work. Meanwhile, there was great demand for new coins in 1948, so my country decided to continue using the old portrait and the date from the previous year, and just add a tiny maple leaf next to the date to alert everyone that it was not really minted in 1947. A small number of my step-brothers got to be born. As the year wore on, no one expected real 1948 coins would ever be produced.

Lo and behold, the new dies used to make me did finally arrive in Canada late in 1948, and so they rushed to make some of me. In one week in December, they banged out 18,780 of me and my brothers, and so I was born after all. Now, eighteen thousand sounds like a really big number, but it turns out that for money it is not. Even though I was only worth a dollar, I was pretty special, and people started thinking they could use me to get even more dollars than the amount stamped on my backside. Not only that, but something went a little wrong during my birth, and so my backside ended up rotated so it doesn't look normal. I used to think it was a birth defect, and I was embarrassed. Then I found out that humans think this is even more special, and some even call it a "sinking canoe". I like that a lot better. I like feeling special. Otherwise it would be a very lonely life for me, because I was never used for my real purpose, which was originally to spend a lot of time with a very large number of different people.

My life ended up being pretty lonely, but I've gotten over that. I've often heard that it's lonely at the top. That comforts me, being at the top anyway. Outside the room where I was born, probably less than ten people have ever touched me, and I'm 66 years old! I got shoved into a bag with a lot of my brothers, we drove to a bank, and a gentleman asked for me and took me home.

This Canadian man was friends with an American man, who lived in a place called Chicago and was very important. The man in Chicago was the head librarian at a newspaper called the Chicago Tribune. This man collected things like me, and he had people all over the world who would send things to him. So I was put in an envelope, and mailed from my birthplace in Canada to my new country. I didn't even need a visa! Gosh, looking back, I really didn't spend much time in my birthplace at all.

What the Canadian man did not know was that his friend in Chicago had recently died. A man named Charles Smutny had taken over his job at the Chicago Tribune, and didn't know what to do with all these coins arriving, so he kept them. It would have been impossible to try to mail them all back to where they came from. So he opened my envelope and gazed upon my beautiful shiny designs. I really am quite pretty, if I don't mind saying so. He took me home and put me in a box with a lot of other coins. This was probably early in 1949, and I stayed in that box until 1972. In some ways it was probably the best years of my life, because everyone else in the box came from the far corners of the world â€" North America, South America, Europe, and Asia, and I had many brothers and sisters from Canada in there with me. It was very interesting getting to know all these different languages and kinds of money. Mr. Smutny retired and took our box from Chicago to Ogden Dunes, Indiana in the late 1950s, and after a few more years we moved again to Harmony, Minnesota to be near Mr. Smutny's son and his family. I liked traveling, but was a little afraid of getting hurt along the way.

In 1972, Mr. Smutny knew he was dying. He had five grandchildren, so when they were all gathered for Thanksgiving (which is a holiday in America), he sat down with all the grandchildren, opened my box, and spread us all out on a table. One by one the grandchildren took turns picking one of us. Of course, they picked the big shiny ones first, so I was one of the first ones to get touched by a new human! I felt special again. The kids were only between 8 and 13 years old, so they didn't know anything about things like me. After all of us were split up, the kids looked at what they had, and started trading each other trying to accumulate dates and countries and denominations. Ouch! Don't drop me like that! I probably picked up a couple scars that day, but nobody is ever going to know where those scars came from, so I don't mind.

Mr. Smutny died a few weeks later. I never really knew if he understood how special I was, but I suspect that he did. It must have been difficult for him to watch which kid I ended up with and not say anything to influence the kids. But that's the way he was - quiet, wry sense of humor and a twinkle in his eye. I still miss him.

My new human took me home to Chicago (again!), and he and his brother got interested in collecting more of me. They joined what's called a "coin club" at school, learned how to take care of me, and my human put me into a protecting thing called a 2x2 and into an album. Gosh, I've been trapped in that thing for over 40 years! Time flies. Around that time my human bought a coin magazine that was mostly US coins but happened to have a section on Canadian coins in the back. That was probably my favorite day. When he realized how special I was, he took me out and looked at me for a long time, dreaming of how many other coins like me he could get just by having only one of me. That's always been a hard thing for me to understand, because I'm just a dollar and was never meant to be anything else. But that's just the way it is, and I'm glad to be wanted so much. I got looked at a lot for a while after that.

My human left me in Chicago while he went away to school, traveled, and lived in a few places around the world. In 1988 he finally cleaned up his kid stuff and drove me to Colorado, where I have lived ever since. Now he has two kids of his own, and he takes me out more often now. That's nice. I like being looked at. There was probably almost 25 years there where nobody even looked at me. Now he seems interested again, and it's funny how his kids had the same reaction when they found out how many thousands of other coins they could get just by having one of me. I suspect they'd rather have lots of stuff instead of one of something.

I don't know what will happen to me when my current human dies. It's almost like I'm immortal or something, watching these humans come and go over the years. It's like being a tree I suppose. I know that I won't live forever either, and who knows how many of my brothers born on that day in 1948 have survived. I've heard that sometimes we get melted and turned into something else. I wouldn't like that, but I guess it could happen if I get really ugly or something. I've heard that others like me get moved around a lot by humans trying to get more of something than they had to give up to get one of us. It would be fun to see more humans, but I don't think they'd feel the same way about me as my current human. I've heard that others like me end up buried in the ground and not found again for thousands of years. I think that might be kind of cool. I think my story won't end for a very long time.

In this day and age ... the LAWYERS!

edit: but it is your screen name that is attached to a user account, intellectual property rights and all that. So if someone did publish then the lawyers would be brought in and all parties involved would be paying all their money to the lawyers... so lets not publish it, at least not with out permissions

This is one of my favorite topics. In between hunting down an elusive quarry
coin collectors have fun with writing funny stories.
Speaking for myself, it keeps me sane. [At least, sane enough to walk the streets.]

A Morgan Marches North and A Canuck Canoe goes to Colorado but the story never does end Wonderful, thank you both.

Thank you all for contributing and reading




Mine too, I'm glad you agree

If anyone is in school and uses their story from here for extra credit let us know how it turns out.

I was 'born' in the winter of 1936, in the great city of San Francisco. One of many 'Walkers' created that year, I would spend a little while sitting in the vault until it was my turn to make the trip out into the world.

For the better part of 30 years, I would travel the country, catching glimpses of roadside stands, great stores and everything in between. Over the years though, my sisters were slowly vanishing around me, replaced by a man the humans called 'Franklin'. But somehow I lasted even longer than my sisters, I grew to know many of these new coins and even saw a second man come into the world, 'Kennedy'.

In the fall of 1964 though, things changed for me, I was sharing pocket space with a Franklin and Kennedy both when the human holding us stopped moving, his body slowly growing cold against us.. He had died with us all in his pocket, we weren't forgotten though as the human's son found us, never again would we do the job we had been created for though.

The new human slipped us into a box for a while, though after a few years that box was opened and I was slipped out of it, seeing the world once again but with a new purpose in mind. He took me to a jeweler, at first I was terrified that I was going to get melted down like so many of my sisters have been over the years, but instead I was attached to what he called a money clip. It was there that I would spend many more years of my life, seeing the world and helping my paper counterparts perform their function with my new role.

Eventually though, somewhere around 2000, the clip broke. I was somewhat roughly pried away from the setting I had come to know as my home, I could see the shavings of silver left behind as I was slipped once more into that box, seeing the other two coins for the first time in many long years. Our human was aging though, and we were taken out of that box a final time a few years later, seeing the daylight and a new face for the first time, as the elderly human gave us to his grandson, along with the story we held with us.

From there, the new human took us home and put us in our own little holders, marked with our dates and mints and that's where we would stay for a time, moving from house to house. We would learn later that the elderly human had passed away from a number of foreign coins that had been passed onto his grandson afterwards. After a while we were wondering what would happen next as we spent year after year in those cases, watching more and more coins get added to that box.

Not long ago though, that question was finally answered for us, the human brought us out and opened the cases once again as he slid us into what he called a 'type set', the new holder felt so much better than the old cases and I feel I could stay like this happily for the rest of my days.




The story of a simple Walking Liberty half that's passed from my great great grandfather to my great grandfather to me, as a child I had always loved the beauty of the coin's design when he pulled that clip out. These three halves were among the first coins to go into my 7070, sure I have 'prettier' examples, but they hold that sentimental value that a pretty face can't replace.