Buckeyecoinguy's 500th Post Contest

Personal opinion gives KenKat the prize thus far.

Look at Bush there.

Homer has him in his signature fighting move he perfected on Bart, the neck wringer.

This should be over, but oh no.

George HW Bush, he just doesn't seem to care and throws the uppercut haymaker.

Doesn't mind getting dirty with fighting Homer down in the sewer either.

Politics should be minimal really other than how they fight.

If you want to play, do some research on the Ionian Revolt or Miletus or Thales. None of that is political and if you win, you could win an ancient silver coin from that city. Same thing for an essay on Ike the coin or Ike the man. The Crime of 1873 is political but it is also a big moment in US coinage. Heck enter them all if you like.

All in good fun.





Besides taxes aren't politics, taxes are a barbaric relic, taxes are oppression.


You have all been fooled debating how much tax is everyone's fair share.

I got the answer there for you all, your fair share is zero. Let those who print the money pay the taxes.

Why does the government need my money when they print their own out of thin air?

I'm going to talk to you about Gresham's Law and coin collecting. Why? Well because while I hadn't previously known the exact name for this phenomenon, I have experienced it multiple times throughout my coin-collecting days. I'm not sure if I'll go over BuckeyeCoinGuy's word limit, but please bear with me as I share a couple stories that may serve as examples of Gresham's Law.

For those of you who similarly were not sure about Gresham's Law, it is easy to search online and find gobs of information. For those of you to lazy to take this step, I can summarize it as the concept that if two types of money are priced the same, but have different values, then the money that has the higher value will be hoarded while the lower value money will be spent. No duh, right?From investopedia: "Bad money drives out good".

I used to be one of those people who would show up at one bank, exchange $50 or $100 for rolls of cents, search through them for wheat cents (or my specialty, 1959 Lincoln memorials), and then return the remaining Lincoln memorials at a different bank. I considered myself to be like a filter, culling out the cents that were more valuable and leaving behind those worth only one cent. I'm not sure how many hundreds of thousands of coins that I searched, but I now have rolls and rolls of wheat cents as a result. At that time in the late 1990s, I even estimated that I was "earning" about minimum wage, when I calculated the value of the coins that I was paying one cent for but could sell for more than one cent each. I imagine that there are folks still doing this or something similar-- removing the pre-1982 US copper cents as their melt value can exceed one cent when the commodity markets shine.

I have moved on (mostly) from US coins and now focus mainly on medieval coins of Europe. As it turns out, even in those days, people liked to profit from their ordinary coinage. One method was shaving small amounts of precious metal from around the rim of a coin. This method was used extensively, as you can see on the coin below (a denar from 1358-71 from Hungary [ref. Huszar 542a]). The diameter of the coin has been reduced from about 15 mm to the current 13 mm. In many places, the legends are only partially visible. Even considering honest wear and tear, someone likely extracted more than 20% of the intrinsic, bullion value of this coin while still being able to likely purchase a full denar's worth of goods.

I'm sure many others on this forum can think of other times in history where "bad" money chased away "good" money--the long crosses on early British coins as an anti-shaving measure and the debased silver and silver washes on coins during Rome's steady decline are two that leap to my mind.

499 words!

My first entry - Topic # 3.

Andrew Jackson became president in 1828. On Jan. 30, 1835 he became the first US president to face an assassination attempt. On that fateful day, a mentally unstable man named Richard Lawrence approached Jackson as he was leaving a funeral at the Capitol building. Lawrence pulled a derringer and attempted to shoot President Jackson. The pistol misfired, and the 67 year old president proceeded to beat him with his walking cane. As he was being pummeled, Lawrence pulled a second derringer and attempted to shoot Jackson. It also misfired. Lawrence was eventually detained by Jackson's aides, but the president was forever parinoid. Jackson feared his political adversaries, the Whigs, had hired Lawrence to commit this heinous act due to Jackson's, and his democrats', attempt to dismantle the 2nd Bank of the US. Jackson's suspicions were never proven, but were understandable, considering his long standing opposition to the central bank, it's operator Nicholas Biddle, and congressional supporters Daniel Webster and Henry Clay. The bank's charter was due to expire in 1836 and they needed President Jackson's support for recharter. Jackson, however, held an enormous amount of distrust of financial institutions, due to his early business career being financially damaged by a tightening of bank credit. This lead Jackson to an almost obsessive opposition to the central bank. He was said to have told his VP, Martin Van Buren, "The bank is trying to kill me, sir, but I shall kill it." While discussing the recharter with a delegation of bankers, he told them, "You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the eternal God, I will rout you out." He then proceeded to veto the recharter. Parinoid or not, Jackson was a very lucky man. Smithsonian researchers conducted a series of tests on Lawrence's derringers. They deduced the odds of both pistols misfiring at 1 in 125,000!

I pay for my healthcare out of pocket. I pay for my insurance and have good coverage with a minimal job. So if I need something it is taken care of. Now if we had taxes for healthcare to be paid for I would be all for that here in the U.S. The issue with most taxes I pay are going to help medicare and Medicaid Members and with that some of them are legit but there s a lot of them that aren't. I worked for a Medicaid and medicare company called Healthfirst a couple years back. I can tell you most of the people that called in are foreign, foreign with up to 10 children, Or just people with up to 10 children. There are the older Members that would call in and yes they need it and it works for them. No problem. The problem with it isn't really the taxation it is how the money is being used. For example food stamps could be gotten by anyone without a job and they weren't even made to look for a job. You could get Medicaid and foodstamps and even housing assistance if you are a single mom who has no job. Plus you get thousands back at the end of the year per child when you aren't even putting your own money into the taxes. Most people are able to get his assistance for nothing and they do it and they can live off it. So they have no responsibility and they never learn any. We could go on about these issues all day but the bottom line is taxes aren't being used appropriately and we have to pay them but there is little to none that one person alone can do to fix.

As far as printing money out of thin air and not having nothing to back it with. Doesn't just cause inflation it causes debt. Our money in the U.S. used to be worth more than others and now we are all around the same give or take a little. The issue with this could be solved but the problem is morals. Our countries and our planet literally is being over grown. We keep letting these foodstamp and Medicaid lovers, that don't really need it, sit and do nothing except multiply then we will over grow. Another issue is cost of living people want to make money and have more and more. so what happens they charge more and more for bigger profit margins. They also skimp on other things like quality and craftsmanship to produce huge numbers to even be able to produce for the masses at a cheap price for them to make more as well. So in this circle we have created the wealthy and the business owners control pricing and yes they do and at the same time the irresponsible multiplyers cause people to be taxed more and fro supplies and things to be higher demand and therefore more expensive. Its a vicious circle with no end. Everything feeds itself and its going in the wrong direction. I'm writing less for this competition now and more to say wake up. When will we change? I don't think even the vastness of the internet would fit this if we wrote down how everything coincides and links together and how they are working against each other now.

That's 567 and I had to chop it up to fit it and now it isn't as good but the points are still made

I pay for my healthcare out of pocket. I pay for my insurance and have good coverage with a minimal job. So if I need something it is taken care of. Now if we had taxes for healthcare to be paid for I would be all for that here in the U.S. The issue with most taxes I pay are going to help medicare and Medicaid Members and with that some of them are legit but there s a lot of them that aren't. I worked for a Medicaid and medicare company called Healthfirst a couple years back. I can tell you most of the people that called in are foreign, foreign with up to 10 children, Or just people with up to 10 children. There are the older Members that would call in and yes they need it and it works for them. No problem. The problem with it isn't really the taxation it is how the money is being used. For example food stamps could be gotten by anyone without a job and they weren't even made to look for a job. You could get Medicaid and foodstamps and even housing assistance if you are a single mom who has no job. Plus you get thousands back at the end of the year per child when you aren't even putting your own money into the taxes. Most people are able to get his assistance for nothing and they do it and they can live off it. So they have no responsibility and they never learn any. We could go on about these issues all day but the bottom line is taxes aren't being used appropriately and we have to pay them but there is little to none that one person alone can do to fix.

Good post tweak.

All posts on topic and under 500 words are entries.

Was hoping for more entries, but still a few weeks to go.

May edit my signature or post script or whatever we call it to include a link to the contest to get more participation.


Keep them coming.