You may call me a numismatist or a numismatic. But before you start inquiring as to how it feels, or whether I need to register as a numismatist for life or how many times I’ve had to change my residence because of its proximity to a school or church, or whether there’s a cure for this affliction, let me explain that what I am is fairly innocuous.
So what is this deep secret? Well, I merely consider myself a collector of coins and currency. I’m not like the serious collectors who own coin books, subscribe to journals on the subject and attend conventions. No, I’m merely one who dabbles and likes to play with money, what little I have.
In the really olden days, when I was 11, my dad made sure always to have several coins in his pocket. In those days, coins jingled; nowadays they make a dull thud. Dad told me I could be popular with the girls if they suspected I was flush. I’d carried a quarter in my pocket, the fruits of a week’s worth of selling Optics on the street. But the quarter lacked a companion, something to cling and clang against.
I rooted out a quarter-sized washer from the toolbox and I was set. But apparently no one was impressed. Since then the sound of coins has become duller, and currency — real, foldable bills — took their place. That was years before the debit card.
About 10 years ago, on my 64th birthday, my oldest son, Stanley Adam, mailed me a large tube which I thought might have contained a football poster.
When I delayed in opening it, by a number of days, he phoned. Inside was a large sheet of uncut two-dollar bills, four across and eight down. They totalled 64 dollars, one for each year of my (younger) life.
“What a great idea!” I thought. That began my acquiring my own collections. I enjoyed detaching them and leaving them as tips. Often, as happened at Souper Salad in Santa Fe, the cashier was so impressed that he transferred several of the uncut bills to his pocket and refilled the register with the contents of his wallet.
I tried to present a full sheet to my brother, Severino, after he did some work for me, but he refused them, saying, “Write me a check instead. Besides, those dollars probably all have the same serial number.”
They got people’s attention, but sometimes in the wrong way. I tried to use them once at McDonalds, where the young attendant took them to the manager, who said that under no circumstances could that restaurant take uncut currency, which their bill reader wouldn’t accept. But as I left, she asked me if I’d sell her a few. I did, and I asked when McDonald’s had hired this employee named Mr. William Reader.
Selling the twos was a losing proposition. At the time, the U.S. Mint charged $85 for a sheet of twos. I didn’t wish to make a profit on my own bills and usually exchanged them for face value. The last I checked, the mint charges roughly twice the face value of uncut currency, making these exchanges a bit too costly.
So I demoted myself to the use of dollar coins instead. I believe Nancy at the downtown Wells Fargo knows what I’ll be asking for each time I enter that bank. I like to collect wrapped rolls of Presidential coins and give them as tips. Invariably, waiters and waitresses need to inspect the gold-colored coins carefully — they look much like quarters.
Once, at a Santa Fe restaurant, Los Potrillos on Cerrillos, I left a half dozen as a tip, whereupon I could almost read the waitperson’s lips: “Ese Americano es muy cheap-eh.” I assured him those were real dollars, not quarters. That insistence convinced him, and as a result, we continue to get great service because of that.
Last Friday I bought two packs of peanuts at the Russell’s store on Seventh, whipped out a dollar coin, which the checker inspected carefully. “I’m not sure we’re allowed to accept these,” the young woman said as she summoned the manager, who in turn said, “We can accept them as long as I get to keep them.” He did, and I saw him place the same amount in paper into the register.
You see? People are at once apprehensive of and receptive toward these coins. Once people inspect the dollars, they wish to keep them.
Others won’t touch them. And for that, I blame the government for not making a bigger splash when the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin came out in 1978, the Sacagawea in 2000 and now the presidential coins in 2011.
In a column a few years back, I wrote about how the Sacagawea coin, because of its color and size, looked too much like a quarter. I wonder if anyone had ever jammed up a jukebox or a newspaper rack by inserting a dollar coin while believing it was two bits.
The new coins don’t have the words “In God We Trust” on either the obverse or the back side. Many people, convinced we’ve taken even God out of coins and currency, have been vocal on that subject, calling it the “Godless coin” and urging boycotts of such coins.
But if they’d looked more carefully, the would have seen those words along the edges of the coins.
Yes, it’s fun to carry a coin that draws a second look. But it also has its pitfalls. For example, I took two $25 rolls into a restaurant, expecting to leave a few of the coins as tips. I’d planned to put the rest of the meal on my debit card.
But when it was time to pay, I discovered that in the pocket where I usually carry my billfold, replete with the 600 cards, 12 licenses and 38 receipts, I had only two rolls of dollar coins, as heavy as the missing billfold.
Guess who needed to dig into her own resources to pay for the meal — plus tip.
My dad told me to “leave those damn coins at home. You’ll lose them or somebody’ll steal ’em.”