Sad Story Of Americans Not Knowing Their Coinage

look, the fellow had to push the button with the picture of a soda to place your order... what did you expect? As a kid in the family business, I remember that the till drawer has the standard 5 rows of drawers. The drawers were filled with (1) pennies, (2) nickels, (3) dimes, (4) quarters, (5) whatever weird stuff that came in that granddad might want to look at for his collection (half-dollars, Ike dollars, bicentennials, pesos, silver quarters, etc.).

its not just coins, thanks to a forum member who sent me some 2 dollar bills, I decided to spend a few , tips at the truck stop( at the same table where I met this forum member) I left a two dollar bill, the waitress asked what it was for and if it was any good to spend.

I went from there to the counter at the mini mart, same establishment, the counter girl asked the manager if she could take the bills.

the manager knows me gave me a stinky eye and told her that the bills were good, to which the girl said where are they from?

I took my purchase and left the stinky eyed manager to explain it to her employee.

Being the guy who takes your money at starbucks, I see this sorta thing all the time. I pay for most of my studd with halfs, dollar coins, and the like purposefully so I can hand the stuff out as change (try to stimulate interest ya know?). My basic rule of thumb is to never give these "wierd" coins to the 20-somethings as these people are clueless. I've had people come back and ask for "real money" or "american money". The best bet is to pass this suff out to eitehr young children with their mothers or to old ladys who tend to give these coins to the grandchildren.

My generation is quite simply retarded but there is hope for the younger ones...

I have read the blog and I have read the posts. I do not see any reason why a young person of today should be expected to recognize coinage he or she has never been exposed to before.

We all have differing educational as well as intellectual levels. I don't remember exactly where I learned about Kennedy and Franklin halves, but I am pretty sure it was 'not' in school.

'Every' generation has it's share of dimwits. The young folks singled out above could possibly be included in that group, but not necessarily. It could be more a matter of exposure.

The part about being oblivious to Ben Franklin's existence 'does' indicate something troublesome about that particular individual though. I would imagine that he is still at least mentioned a few times in a basic twelve year curriculum. Probably this person is more knowledgeable of topics other than history.

The US Government decides the mintage of each denomination based on demand. Silver dollars and halves have virtually no basis for existence in today's economic marketplace. We live in a society of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters, and that is it (other than paper money and credit/debit cards).

I had a buddy who wanted to know if I wanted some " Indian pennies" that he had and knew that they were different so he thought I might want them. He ended up bringing over about 5 Sacagawea dollars. Of course I should have gave him a nickel to pay him for the 5 " Indian pennies" he just gave me. Anyhow I told him they were $1 coins and he thought only the presidents were on dollar coins. I was actually surprised he know that there were Presidential dollar coins. Lots of people just don't know or care beyond the regular cents, nickels, dimes, and quarters. It will be interesting to see how many people think the new 2010 penny is some kind of fake...

True! I've had many cashiers come to me AFTER they have taken money that they were unfamiliar with. The money LOOKED good to them. (I gladly took it off their hands) I for one am glad that there are plenty of people out there that aren't knowledgeable with US coins and currency. If everybody was savvy then there would be nothing in circulation for us roll searchers to find!

Can't put all of the blame on the manager.

What about parents and schools as well?

Government does not help either use of the half dollar and dollar coins are not common.

Since dollar coins are not seen often and now we have ones with different US presidents and diffent native american design, how would an average person who does not collect coins get exposed to all of the different ones.

Add to this all of the different quarter reverses (but at least George Washington is on the front of all of them).

Sounds like information overload to me.

Ken

Don't blame the educational system or the store managers. It is the fault of the government who makes this stuff at tax payer expense only to hoard it up in federal vaults for years. If they would put forth a genuine effort to circulate the "weird stuff" In a few years these denominations would become main stream coin and currency. That is after the non collectors had hoarded up so much of it that they will need to get rid of some and maybe actually pare down the hoard into a semi bonafide collection. I know several people who put the "golden dollars" into large gars and save them because "you just don't see may of these around" Another reason is "they don't make many of these" and the best of all is the one a guy told me early on in 2009........."Because the price of gold is gonna keep going up and these will be worth a lot of money when it does."