A 1949 Nickel

I noticed a 1949 nickel in my change today. I don't usually look through my change, but I noticed it when I took it out of my pocket at the exercise place. I don't want all that change rattling around (and weighing me down) while I'm doing my best to exert myself on the machines.

So there it was, right on top. With the outlines of everything on it being clear from all the dirt at the edges from over the years. It's hard for me to believe this coin's been out there kicking around for 60 years, but who knows the story!

1949 is before my parents were married. I don't know if they even knew each other yet. Curly from The Three Stooges was still alive. (These are the big historic markers for me, what was going on with my parents and what Curly Howard was up to.)

So a 1949 nickel is an oldie but a goodie. I don't know whether to put it on my shelf (why would I do that?) or just let it go back into the wild. I probably will do that, in order to give the next guy something to think about too.

The Lincoln Penny

This is Lincoln's 200th birthday. And 2009 is also the 100th birthday of the Lincoln penny. They honored Lincoln's centennial year in 1909 by putting him on the measly penny. Although maybe it was worth something back then, since you could buy a newspaper for a penny back then.

This site from the U.S. Treasury gives a fact sheet on the subject. The public didn't want portraits on coins but because of everyone's love for Lincoln, they said OK. Get us an artist. It turns out there was only one man for the job, Victor David Brenner. He was "the only person invited to participate in the formulation of the new design." So it's a good thing he did a good job, because if he had messed it up in some way, we'd all be ashamed of the penny.

They had the wheat design on the flipside, which most of us have probably seen. We used to get them occasionally, and I knew someone who would buy them for like a quarter apiece. Then in 1959, the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's birth, they came up with the new flipside, the Lincoln memorial artwork that we still have to this day.

Now, it being the 200th year, I see they have some other designs. I only saw one on a photo, a log cabin.