November 07, 2003
My Two Cents worth...
SteveG is very concerned about the new nickel. "Why does the US Mint keep making coins without numbers on them? The new nickel has evocative images on them. People, please! Put numbers on the money. Makes sense to me."
What he means, of course, is putting the numeral 5 on the coin. It already says "Five cents" on both sides. That seems good enough to me.
The real story here, I think, is the removal of Jefferson's image from the coin. I see this as a step, preparing the way toward, trying to abolish the US One Cent piece altogether.
[UPDATE: I had this thing, about them removing Jefferson's face, wrong. See the next post here.]
The big stumbling block to removing totally obsolete penny is the State of Illinois Lincoln lobby. By removing Jefferson, the mint weakens Illinois' demand to preserve the Lincoln coin.
I'm in favor of abolishing both the penny and the paper One Dollar bill.
Oh Jack,
You're so English centric.
Why would we limit the monetary designation to English, when the numeral '5' would be easier to read?
5, 5, 5, 5, let's sing the song of 5. How many is 5?
But I think you'd better go back and look at that US Mint web page where it says, "The obverse will continue to bear the likeness of President Jefferson. "
Thank goodness for that!