Nothing much, just an incredibly clear and strong strike for what appears to be a well circulated coin. I got all 4 copper cents at lunch today in change. There's some weirdness below the "E" in WE, but I think it's just circulation damage. The Letters appear a bit offset as well. Cheers!
If they hadn't changed the design, we'd probably be finding cents from the 30's and 40's in our change to this day. The only reason wheaties disappeared from circulation is because people will hoard anything unusual. I suspect that's part of the reason they refuse to completely redesign the coinage today.
The US is the only country I know of where 50+ year old coins can routinely be found in circulation. That says a lot for the stability of our currency and economy.
Out of curiosity, what is the shortest lived currency? Does anyone know? I saw Zimbabwe that just went off their own currency, and you can buy stacks of bills on Ebay (billions of dollars of useless bills). I would think they may rank up towards the top.
As for short lived currencies, the transitional currencies from post Soviet states come to mind. For example, the Ukrainian "kupon" (coupon) and the Belorussian ruble popularly known as the "zaichik" (bunny rabbit). These were small cheap looking notes that look like they were printed in someone's garage. The Zimbabwean dollar was actually around since the country's independence which I believe was in the 70's and was once at par with the US dollar. Mugabe's socialistic policies did away with that once and for all until the currency was inflated out of existence.
