Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;john65999, post: 7887729, member: 111931&quot;]found it!!!!!&nbsp;&nbsp; </p><p>When the American public by-and-large rejected the Susan B. Anthony dollars, many were sent overseas to be used in paying military personnel. Can you imagine getting a bunch of two-dollar bills and SBA dollars in your pay packet? That was reality for many troops stationed in West Germany at the time.</p><p><br /></p><p>It was even worse for them than you might think: the West German businesses didn’t want Susan B. Anthony dollars either! Many establishments refused them outright, and even the banks, which maintained an exchange ratio of roughly 1.75 <i>deutschemarks </i>for each paper dollar, would take SBA dollars only one-for-one…a nasty pay cut of more than 40% on the portion paid out in SBAs.</p><p><br /></p><p>After I received my Susan B. Anthony dollar, I showed it to Dave Stone, one of my co-workers in the cataloging department. Dave’s a great guy, really easy-going and smart with lots of worldly experience. He listened with a patient smile as I rattled off the West German payment factoid, and when he was done, he just said:</p><p><br /></p><p>“I know. I was there.”</p><p><br /></p><p>It’s funny. From a few of the stories he’d told me — and the good ones are not mine to tell, alas — I knew he’d been a sergeant in the U.S. Army (where he’d picked up the punning nickname “<a href="http://comics.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleNo=7079&amp;lotNo=92213" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://comics.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleNo=7079&amp;lotNo=92213" rel="nofollow">Sgt. Rock</a>”), that he’d been stationed in West Germany, and the years were right, but I’d never once thought about him being there, trying to spend these funny tiny dollars the bars wouldn’t take, living what I knew only as a tale from history.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in