Incorrect Television/Film Tropes About Numismatics

One of the more common Television Tropes that you will see is confederate money is worthless. Often times the protagonist will go to great effort, expense, and through great danger to locate a vast fortunate that ends up being a large amount of "worthless" Confederate States of America notes.

I remember "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? Episode 16: A Night of Fright is No Delight" from childhood where Scooby, Shaggy, Fred, Daphne, and Velma had to stay in a haunted house for an entire night for Scooby to be entitled to a portion of a Million $ inheritance from the deceased Colonel Beauregard Sanders. The gang eventually unmask the crooks trying to scare Scooby and the others out of their inheritance but in the end they find out the treasure chest will all the money is filled with worthless CSA dollars and that the joke is on them.

This Television Trope was never entirely based in fact, CSA notes have always had novelty value and are not totally worthless. Although a vast majority of Confederate money was indeed worth very little since the South had printed it in such large sums in the last few desperate years of the American Civil War and it wasn't backed by anything since the south had lost and couldn't repay any of its debts. In more recent years CSA notes have gained substantial interest from coin and currency collectors and have a sizable base of collectors that collect them. The more common notes produced in huge quantities in decent condition may only be worth $25 or so and possibly less if heavily worn or damaged but that is not WORTHLESS as television would have you believe and many of the more desirable and less common notes can be worth in the hundreds or even thousands of dollars per note.

That chest of CSA notes that Scooby-Doo inherited may not be all that worthless if he had done some research and had a eBay store to reach collectors! He and Shaggy might have been sitting pretty with plenty of cash to fund all the excursions to the local burger and malt they could have wanted!

Your Thoughts? Do you have any examples on how Films and Television get Numismatics wrong?

Joe2007

 

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Meow recalls a Scooby Doo story about a Kookie Coin and a mummy. Meow is sure not all Kookie Coins are related to mummies.

 

I have never really seen anything I would call a trope however I did watch a Barnaby Jones episode recently were a guy stole rare coins for drugs. They did not show the coins close up so I couldn't make them out.

 

Not necessarily a trope, but a mistake. In the very beginning of the Netflix series "Narcos," the narrator says how it's the year 1989 and the camera pans over a bunch of packs of bills.

However, the $10s have big-head portraits, which didn't start until 1992

https://www.cointalk.com/threads/only-a-money-guy-would-notice.283545/

 

One thing that comes to mind is the ol’ “bite the gold coin to test its authenticity” trope. The TV shows would lead you to believe that if the coin bends, it means that it’s real gold. On the contrary, if the coin bends, it means it’s likely a gold plated fake (probably a lead core)!

 

I haven’t tried to bite into gold, but won’t that damage your teeth?

 

I recall an article in a coin magazine, I'm thinking by @Mike Thorne , where he handed a gold coin to a friend/classmate? who bit it hard enough to damage it. Just imitating what he had seen on tv.

 

The nemesis of every specialist...television writers.

 

Many times, the trope is that ancient coins are incredibly valuable, when in fact they are no more expensive (and often cheaper) than US collectible coins, such as commemorative half dollars or Morgans.

 

Movie "Jesse James vs The Daltons"

 

At least one of the people in that photo was a collector!

 

I don’t know if I agree with this per se. if you handed me an arbitrary amount of money up to the high 5 figure range, I can practically guarantee I could spend it on one single coin, be it ancient or American. One could probably pull off a similar feat past $100K, but I know of no ancient coin that has sold for over $1M.

 

I think the idea is that a hoard of LRBs isn’t exactly the goldmine people think it is. When these are sold by the hundred, or by the pound, for less than a dollar each, that tells you that “just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s valuable”

 

Yeah, I get that. I have a nice, near MS Constantine the Great follis I love to show people. First, I explain what it is and who Constantine was. Then, I tell them to hold out their hand. People are often a little reluctant to even hold it in their bare hands. I just explain that there’s nothing your clean hands are going to do to the coin in 1 minute that almost 1700 years hasn’t already done. Then, I tell them I paid like $30 for it, and the reaction is almost always disbelief.

Then, sometimes, I go into how you can find ancient coins for $10, $100, $1000, or $10000, and that the majority of mine are in the $100 range. They sometimes ask why ancient coins are so cheap, and I just shrug and say “supply and demand.” I think it really puts things in perspective.

What I was saying earlier is that the high end goes higher than most collectors can reach in both cases, nothing more.

 

On one of the Matlock shows they are standing in the ashes from a house fire. Matlock reaches down and starts picking up the coins from a 1936 proof set.
I was told that he was actually a coin collector.

 

https://archive.org/details/buddyebsencollec1987supe/mode/2up

 

Yes, Buddy Ebsen was a collector and help start a Hollywood coin club. Weeeell doggy.

 

Two things come to mind:
The first is an old Perry Mason episode where a jeweler is murdered fr his collectible $50,000 (in those days) raw half-dollar. It was passed around Perry's office by the whole cast including Paul who is smoking up a storm as usual.
The second is an old (of course) John Wayne western where somebody is paid a $50 gold piece which is promptly bitten. I don't mind the biting part as much as I am confused by the existence of an 1880's $50 gold piece.

 

$50 gold "slugs" weren't in common use in day-to-day transactions. Rather like a $500 or $1000 bill would be, at best, awkward to make change for a newsstand purchase, they were simply too much money in a single package for widespread use. The $50 slugs were minted in some quantity by a few well-known and respected private mints in California during the 1850's. Their designs emulated those of regular-issue US gold coins of the era, and they were used somewhat like very high denomination bills were in the 19th & 20th centuries for transfers between banks and between businesses of relatively large sums. Those made by highly respected and trusted sources like the US Assay Office of Moffat & Co. and assayer Augustus Humbert, the Baldwin & Co., Kellogg & Co. and Wass, Molitor & Co. offices in San Francisco in the 1850's might conceivably be in very limited circulation in the time represented in that John Wayne western - gold circulated a lot more freely in the west - as long as it was supposed to take place prior to the withdrawal of gold from circulation in the 1930's.