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Message:: [QUOTE="Conder101, post: 61117, member: 66"]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.[/QUOTE]