Stamp and Coin News

Two interesting stories from the complementary worlds of stamp collecting and coin collecting caught my eye recently.

A copy of the 1918 U.S. "Inverted Jenny" air mail stamp - stamps showing a Curtiss JN "Jenny" biplane printed upside down, only one hundred of which are known to exist - was found on an absentee ballot mailed in Florida. Had it been authentic, it would have been the only recorded example of a used copy. It turned out to be a clever fake. But not clever enough; the perforation was set on a larger gauge than the one used on the genuine stamps. Nonetheless, the National Postal Museum in Washington wants to include it in its collection, finding it an interesting piece of postal history.

The latest gambit from the U.S. Mint is one that coin collectors might not find so intriguing; the Mint is issuing dollar coins bearing likenesses of all deceased U.S. Presidents, four per year, starting in 2007. The government has been trying to get Americans to used dollar coins for years, because dollar bills wear out more quickly. When the Eisenhower dollar coin failed, the reasoning was that it was too big. Then the Susan B. Anthony dollar failed, and the Mint decided it was because it looked too much like a quarter (were they implying that Susan B. Anthony looked like George Washington?) . With the Sacajawea dollar, the Mint finally got around to making it of a different color - gold - as the Brits and the Canadians had done years before with their high-value coins, thinking it had finally produced a dollar coin that was distinctive and convenient. It was both, but it wasn't popular. (The gold alloy got tarnished easily, also.) Now here we go again, with the Mint hoping that the Presidential coins will spur more coin collecting and, more importantly, get folks to use dollar coins.

Yeah? Well, the Sacajawea coin had the best chance for success due to its logical design, and even that one failed. The U.S .Mint can rationalize all they want, but the bottom line is that Americans don't like high-value coins. Which is a shame, because I think they make perfect sense and try to use them when I can. But this is America; when was the list time we ever did anything that made sense? I might like dollar coins, just as I like soccer and hatchback cars, but as with the latter two, I'm in the minority on this issue. The only way Americans will use one-dollar coins is if the Federal Reserve stops printing one-dollar bills, as the Bank of Canada did in that country. Not going to happen - there are paper mills somewhere in the districts of influential congressmen that's not going to give up their contracts with the Federal Reserve so easily.