A month or so back there was a column or letter in Coin World where the writer, a female in the medical field, proposed an interesting idea for coins. Essentially, each denomination would have a different theme. She suggested Presidents on one denomination, First Ladies for another, medical breakthroughs on another denomination, achievements in arts and sciences and literature and education on another denomination, etc. It was hard to swallow her astonishing bias of giving medical achievements their own denomination and making every other niche share a denomination, but her overall idea was interesting. As a starting point, and to try and improve on our current Presidents theme, I’m going to suggest the following: cents: American flowers and trees nickels: American birds dimes: American symbols (flag, liberty bell, Old Ironsides, etc.) quarters: American animals (other than birds) halves: American national parks dollars: Founding Fathers and other heroes of the American Revolution silver bullion: keep liberty theme 22K gold bullion: keep liberty theme 24K gold bullion: One Amendment from the Bill of Rights I would change the first five every five years, staggered one coin change per year. I know this can be improved on; this is just a starting point.
Commemrorative Cent needs some special attention. A commemorative cent is a great idea.....but why don't we change the size of the cent while we are at it. The one eurocent is the perfect size and it would save the US Government lots of money annually in the longrun....
I must admit i myself particularly dislike these coin themes. I don't mean yours in particular. I just mean the whole idea of rotating designs in general. I tend to prefer static designs that are only changed every 15/20 years, although when they change they change dramatically. Why 15/20 years? If you leave it longer than that the coinage gets a certain yawn factor about it, change it much quicker than than and you seem to lose any sense of stability, it bcomes too collector orientated, too mint making profit orientated for my liking. I think the old days of US coins were better, Barber series came lasted a while, got changed for the new classic designs of the 1910s, they stopped a while then they changed, i think in the 1960s they should have changed them again, and then again in the 1980s/1990s.
Rotational period is just another parameter. I suggested five years as a starting point, but a longer period is workable too.
Hmm five years is alright. It's when you get to say four designs per year that it gets stupid and if a humble date collector like me was say trying to get all the denominations can you imagine the amount you'd have to get if all the denominations were rotating on four designs a year? Ekkk! I think if you were to have a standard obverse for each denomination and have the rotational aspect on the reverse then you could just get away with changing the design every year. I know from first experience that UK £1 coins do this rather successfully, let me explain it for those uncertain; There are 5 designs at any one time, one Royal, one for England, one for Scotland, one for Ireland and one for Wales. The obverse is always Elizabeth II (The portrait is altered every so often, 1953, 1968, 1985 and the last time 1998). Now how the reverses work are as follows; 1983 Royal design 1984 Scottish theme 1985 Welsh theme 1986 Irish theme 1987 English theme and then in 1988 they started back with the royal theme again and ran through the designs again taking it to 1992. (The royal design tends to remain unaltered, although there was a one off design in 1988 but we'll ignore that). Then in 1993 a whole new set of designs were introduced, still representing the same four contries but rather than using national plant emblems lie thistles and oak trees, they switched it to heraldry, three lions, dragon etc. Each one of those designs were issued twice taking the run to 2002, and from 2003 onwards they've now altered the theme to national bridges, which i suppose will run for two terms per design taking us to 2012. Now i suppose if you have say five or ten designs for each of your themes then you could either run it for 20 years and have each design come out twice, or if you only have five designs run it for 10 years and have each design come out twice. This adds stability because it's recurring, and the retaining of a static obverse of some sort, say a map of the US, or the liberty torch or an eagle or something would keep some kind of extra stability. Whilst issuing different reverses gives a bit of spice to the series. The only problem i forsee is that modern mints are very collector/profit orientated and they'll make more by issuing them much faster say four designs a year and running it into the ground to make as much out of it as they can, until the collectors can no longer keep up with the output.
Yes, my “five year plan” includes staggering the design changes one per year for the five smallest denominations. So, in 2006 change the cent, 2007 change nickel, 2008 change dime, 2009 change quarter, 2010 change half, 2011 change cent, etc. That way every year there is one new coin design to look forward to, but not so many to collect as now with the state quarters and its five per year. I’m trying to strike a balance so that there are enough changes to not go stale, but not so many as to inundate collectors (“taking a sip from a firehose”).
In that case your idea seems pretty sensible and i like it. I'm not adverse to change every now and again, but i like it steady.
I suggest that we go back to having Lady Liberty on our coins... dog-gone-it...if we had some good looking coins nowdays with Lady Liberty on it I might start collecing modern coins again!!! Speedy
I would probably prefer Lady Liberty, also. I guess my problem with it is I don’t have confidence that the Mint can come up with anything comparable to the SLQ, Walkers, or Saint Gaudens realizations, and that anything new would be a disappointment. Maybe if they let Elizabeth Jones design the coins ... http://coinpalace.com/index.html But, you’re probably right; we can’t achieve great things if we don’t aim for great things.
The mint would either regurgitate the old designs... Or they just introduce more clipart stuff. And can you really imagine a low relief SLQ in clad with spaghetti hair? Sometimes it's best not to have good designs for them to ruin.
This reminds me of the Chinese Pandas. The picture seems a bit clipart to me, it’s the implementation that knocks me out: I love the way they use different textures to simulate different shades.
True...maybe they could bring back the same designs...but then I wouldn't mind if they went back to the Barber coins...but I don't think many agree with me there. Speedy
maybe they should have a hobo(sp?) design the coins and have the following 1c...air and space 3c...american authors 5c...declaration of independance 10c...constitution 20c...other famous americans 25c...famous law enforcers 50c...chief justices 1D....Vice presidents rotating every 3 years or when a VP dies 2D....Presidents rotating every 5 years or when one dies 5D....Liberty design
I like your "air and space"; I was thinking about some sort of transportation theme that would show great ships, planes, trains, and cars of American history.
Famous historical events. That could cover everything, battles, inventions, air and space, Wild west, maritime, LADY LIBERTY, etc.....
Maybe one from each decade. If you changed them every ten years, it would take about 230 years to cover each decade from 1770 to 2000. By then we'd have another 23 decades of events to record to coin.
hmm, i happen to like the way the coins were...and i really hope i dont see any first lady's on any coins.
Sylvester is right about not altering the designs too frequently. Keeping the same designs for awhile does give the currency a sense of stability. For many years that was the treasury's reason for testifying against any measue brought before the Congress about design change. But if you go too long without changing designs, rather than stability a sense of stagnation sets in instead. This has become the polem with our coinage. To me I think the Mint act of 1890 had the right idea about not changing any more frequently than every 25 years. Unfortunately I think it needed to go a little further and require it to be changed after 25 years. I have suggested in the past (before the sac dollar was proposed) that a good compromise would be to change designs every 25 years but to stagger the change for each design by five years. (cent, five years, nickel, five years, dime etc.) Five years after the half was changed it would be 25 years since the cent had been changed and it would be time to start over. This plan has the advantage tht no design stays around long enough to get stale, a new design is introduced often enough to introduce freshness, yet there is considerable stability in the designs. Since there are six denominations now the five years per would result in thirty years for each design a little longer than I would like but not so long as to create staleness.
