I always wondered why certain coin series types were named after their designer and others named after the coin design itself. The Morgan Silver Dollar; Barber Dime, Quarter, Half; and Saint Gaudens $20 Gold were named after the designer. I always wondered how these people got their names in such noteriety. I always wondered, who decides the "name" of each coin -- i wonder if that was done by congress or later by coin books (such as the Redbook Guide to U.S.Coins) If the powers that be had continued to do the naming by designer, the Lincoln Cent might be known today as the Brenner Cent, and the Kennedy Half as the Roberts Half. Sort of a funny thought. I also find it interesting that early in our countries coin history, specific coin designs were shared amongst many denominations: The Draped Bust was used on half cents, cents, dimes, quarters, halfs, and dollars. Later the Liberty Seated design was shared by many denominations. That finally ended around 1916 when the Barber series ended. No idea why though -- not sure what happened in 1916 to motivate this change. Maybe prior to that it was just laziness on the part of the USMint? Or a cost saving measure? In any case I am glad this change was made as I think it would be boring today if all coins shared the same design. It's also interesting that the switching from alegorical representations of liberty or history to dead presidents was first adopted in 1909 when the cent was changed to the Lincoln Head design. This set a powerful precident (no pun intended) as in the 1930's and 1940's all coins switched over to the dead president (or elder statesmen) design with the Jefferson, Rosevelt, Washington, and Franklin design. The only exception that I can think of was the S.B.A. and later Saga. Dollar coins (althought both of these women had historical importance). I know our bullion coins have used either old allegorical designs (ASE and AGE) or new allegorical designs (the platinum bullion coin) -- which is nice and I always thought added to their popularity. However i wonder if this country will ever take a circulating modern coin and design a new allegorical liberty concept. Anyway, just a few random thoughts i had this morning!
I think a lot of these coins have names that are kind of a slang type adjective. Did you ever look for an album to hold your (inaccurately named) "Mercury" dimes, or "Barber" halves? Well to my surprise at the time, these names that I've known them to be were not their real names according to the album manufacturer. The owner of the coin shop handed me a book for "Winged Liberty dimes", and "Liberty head halves".
good point ... i bet youre right and the names have changed a bit over the years ... i wonder what the draped bust was actually called in 1800?
Well, the Capped Bust was known as "John Reich's Fat Mistress." To answer the questions: The collecting community names and renames the coins, apart from any official designations. If you read the trade publications, you will that some are very fussy about never referring to nicknames such as the Mercury Dime. Liberty Seated or Seated Liberty? Once an editorial decision is made, it is cut in stone. Coinage types used to be consistent across the entire series to better announce the Nation unambiguously. It was carried over from the fact that the monarch (duke, count, whoever) was always portrayed, though, in fact, the portraits and portrayals might not be consistent across the series. Note also (puns are starting to bubble up here), that paper money did not have the same consistent presentations. What changed with coins was President Theodore Roosevelt's getting Augustus Saint Gaudens to create the $20. Also, I believe -- cannot prove -- that by 1900, the USA recognized that its place in the world allowed it coins to be accepted without needing to be consistent in emblem and device. Thus, the way was cleared for the other designers. I think that we will see a return to effiigies of Liberty when larger coin denominations come out, as is inevitable. A $5 coin would be the perfect entry way. This summer, I saw a pizza shop whose sign lacked a decimal point and I wondered how long it would be until a pizza actually costs $899. It will happen eventually.
Great post mma ... you answered a lot of my questions ... thanks a legal tender $5 coin would be cool It would be nice if they brought back a "silver dollar" sized coin ... however I know that big coins dont circulate .. i just like the way they look and feel
Wasn't "Mercury" an ancient pagan god or something? I can see how it got its nic-name, it is a little odd looking. I still don't see how wings on Liberty's cap symbolize freedom of thought. I believe someone was a little smoked up...
Yeah, Mercury was an ancient god with wings on her FEET. If I was a god I'd prefer the wings in a lot of other places. Could you imagine trying to control those puppies?
The practice of having the sme design on all the coins was not unique to this country. In fact that was the standard practice in most countries and many still follow it. Often there would be three designs, one for the base metals, one for the silver and one for the gold coins. This was because often there would be a close overlap in sizes and it prevented the plating of a low value coin to get it to pass as a higher value. (Back then the coins often did not have denominations on thm and people were expected to know the values based on the size and the metal.) As for deciding to go with differnet designs in 1916 it was definitely not a matter of a cost svings. It would have been much cheaper to have just had the coins designed in house and use one design for all the coins. As it was they had to pay for three designs and then pay more to have them revise them. In house they would not have had to pay the engraver any extra and they would have perfected the one design and then just used it on each coin. It is possible that if the 1890 design contest had been successful we might have had individual design for the coins 25 years earlier, but Barber and Saint-Gaudens made sure that didn't happen.
Well, it was all legal back then. In fact, I believe that one of the reasons for the many mint errors -- numerals struck sideways and off place -- was that men came to work high on opiates and other drugs. You could buy paregoric and people gave it to infants, creating instant re-addiction in adulthood. Since it was legal, there was no criminal consequence... just errors in workmanship. HIS feet. Mercury to the Romans is congruent with Hermes of hte Greeks and Thoth of the Egytians, but only approximately so. Hermes had other chores, and Mercury's life story was different from Thoth's, and so on. Hermes and Mercury were both messengers. They wore traveler's caps, called a "petasos" in Greek, a broad-brimmed hat with a short round cap. Mercury had more of a floppy hat. The hats protected against rain and sun both. The caduceus is also the result of mixed images, at once the staff of a messenger and that of a doctor. The messenger had a staff with white cloth (hence the "wings") as a sign of neutrality for crossing battlefields or taking messages from side to side. The serpents of Asclepius (god of medical healing; originally a real person, it seems), were appended to Mercury's staff later. Hard to say why...
' Lots of nicknames change over time and it is interesting to revisit some of the "why's." (Who's fat mistress? Really?) I would guess that the nickel didn't get the "Indian" title because the cent already had it. I'm not fond of the term, "Buffalo," which is not the correct name for the American species "bison," but has been used for hundreds of years. I do insist on saying "Cent," which means one part of a hundred. "Penny" is used in the non-decimal coinage of other countries and the two terms are not interchangeable by definition.
