Meet the 5 iconic women being honored on new quarters in 2024

Since its debut in 2022, the U.S. Mint’s American Women Quarters Program has issued special quarters each year featuring women who shaped the country. Past honorees include writer Maya Angelou, astronaut Sally Ride, and actor Anna May Wong.

In 2024, the program will issue new quarters honoring five women: Pauli Murray, Patsy Takemoto Mink, Mary Edwards Walker, Celia Cruz, and Zitkala-Ša. These women’s accomplishments were as diverse as America itself. They were activists, authors, physicians, and politicians. Yet, one common purpose united their work: They broke down the barriers. 

Historically, U.S. currency has been the domain of men, but the U.S. Mint is ever so slightly adjusting the gender balance this year with new quarters depicting American women.

It wasn’t until 1979 that the Susan B. Anthony Dollar became the first U.S. circulating coin to feature an American woman, and her successors were at first far and few between. The Sacagawea Golden Dollar Coin was issued in 2000 and Helen Keller appeared on Alabama’s state quarter in 2003. In 2022, though, the Mint got busy. The bureau’s American Women Quarters Program became its first circulating coin program dedicated exclusively to women. The four-year series, which has already featured depictions of Eleanor Roosevelt, Maya Angelou, and Sally Ride, will have introduced 20 new quarters into circulation that show women by the time the program wraps in 2025.

This year’s designs include depictions of the “Queen of Salsa,” Celia Cruz, and Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, the only woman to receive the Medal of Honor. Cruz, the Cuban-American salsa singer, is shown on her quarter with her signature catchphrase “¡AZÚCAR!,” or Spanish for “sugar!” while Walker, a Civil War-era surgeon, is shown in hers wearing her medal. 

Rep. Patsy Takemoto Mink (D-Hawaii), the first woman of color to serve in Congress, was a coauthor of Title IX, and she’s depicted in her quarter design wearing a lei with documents representing her signature legislation in front of the U.S. Capitol.

Reverend Pauli Murray, a civil rights activist and lawyer who cofounded the National Organization for Women, became the first Black woman to be ordained as an Episcopal priest in 1977. Her quarter shows her portrait inside the letters “HOPE” and features a line from her poetry, “A song in a weary throat.” 

The quarter for Zitkala-Ša shows the Native American writer and activist wearing a traditional Yankton Sioux dress holding a book. The bird in the distance represents The Sun Dance, the first opera by a Native American, which opened in Vernal, Utah, in 1913.

The first quarter of the series this year will be Murray’s, which is scheduled to be available beginning Feb. 1. The obverse or heads portion of the coins all depict George Washington as sculpted by Laura Gardin Fraser for Washington’s 200th birthday and the text “Liberty” and “In God We Trust.”

The final quarters, coming out in 2025, will depict journalist Ida B. Wells, Girl Scouts founder Juliette Gordon Low, astronomer Vera Rubin, tennis player Althea Gibson, and Stacey Park Milbern, who was an activist for people with disabilities.

Source

How to Value Your Old Coins

 

Do you have old coins at home? A silver coin collection that gramps left you? Learn to value your old coin collection.

 

Retiring Old Coins

Coins can last around 30 years in circulation before they’re too worn to use. When coins reach the end of their life, the Federal Reserve removes them from circulation. Old coins are melted down and used for other things.

Why Would You Want To Melt Coins?

The only time it ever makes sense to melt down coins is when the face value or collector's intrinsic value of that coin is less than the value of the metal used to make the coin. For instance, in 1979 and 1980, silver prices rose to just shy of $50 an ounce ” an all-time high. [1] As a result, an untold number of coins with silver content were melted down because their metal was more valuable than the coin's value.

This rarely happens. Generally, coins are worth more in numismatic value than they are when melted down. This is especially true when it comes to the costs of the melting process itself. However, it all depends on the current price of the metal and whether it is high enough to warrant the melting.

What Rules Are in Place for Melting Coins?

It's illegal to melt down coins in some countries. Canada, for instance, forbids the melting down of any Canadian legal tender in the country. Be sure to check in with your country's laws on melting or defacing official coinage before sending your coins off to the furnace.

In the United States, melting non-circulating silver or gold coins is legal. As long as the coin is not in circulation, you can melt it down regardless of its composition. Source

Life of a Coin

A circulating coin begins its life as an idea. Once the U.S. Mint designs and makes the coin, it gets passed around to people and businesses before it retires. Follow the life of a coin in the steps below.

Before the Mint designs a coin, Congress tells us to make new coins by passing a law. Sometimes the law includes certain designs that must be put onto the coins, like people or places.

Once Congress passes a law, the Mint’s work starts and the coin is born.

Source

How to Clean a Coin Correctly

 

 

Alvin L. Stern is a coin dealer and  numismatic appraiser. In this lecture presentation at the Texas Numismatic Association in 2016 he addresses the great taboo about cleaning coins. Alan contends that it is necessary part of the coin collecting hobby. Learn his perspective about this controversial subject and how to do so responsibly.

What Is Commodity Money and Is It Still Used? – with Examples

Commodity money is a form of money that has inherent, intrinsic value because it is made from a commodity that has value by itself for production or consumption. Commodity money is a physical asset - you can see it, hold it, touch it.

In simpler terms, gold coins were commodity money because the gold from which the coins were made had intrinsic value and if the coins were melted down, the gold would still retain its value. The gold could also be used for production, i.e., making jewelry, giving it its intrinsic value.

But we should backtrack a bit here – what is money? Money can be defined as an asset that is accepted as a medium of exchange for goods or services. The value of that asset can and was determined by many different factors but it often boiled down to a commonly recognized value by the people that use it.

In that context, there are three primary categories or types of money (the latter 2 will be discussed in more detail later):

• Commodity money
• Representative money
• Fiat money

Popular examples of commodity money throughout history were gold, silver, and copper, cocoa beans, shells, tea, barley, furs, and even cigarettes. Clearly, people exchanged all types of commodities for goods or services. Then, how is commodity money different from bartering?

Commodity Money vs. Bartering

Bartering is an exchange system where goods are exchanged for other goods or services. The value of the items that are being exchanged is determined by the people participating in the trade. So, if an ancient cattle farmer was to give a calf to a carpenter in exchange for a table, that would be bartering.

But the system of bartering has several limitations. For one, it is difficult to transport different types of goods across large distances, making it impractical. Second, there is no set ‘exchange rate’ or how the value of one asset converts to all other assets.

Third, many goods cannot be divided into smaller parts, making smaller trades or more accurate exchanges difficult. Finally, many goods are also perishable, which disallows them to be a store of value. So, bartering faced 4 challenges:

• portability;
• convertibility;
• divisibility;
• perishability.

To make trade more effective, the concept of commodity money evolved. A single type of asset that was portable, divisible, and non-perishable would be chosen and used to trade for other goods and services at an agreed-upon exchange rate.

Thus, the key difference between barter and commodity money is that commodity money uses a single recognized unit of exchange to purchase goods or services.

Two Other Primary Types of Money – Representative and Fiat Money

To reiterate, commodity money is money that has intrinsic value due to the commodity of which it is made. But there are also two other primary categories of money:

• Representative money – representative money is when the value of the money is backed by an underlying commodity that has intrinsic value and where the unit of money can be exchanged for the underlying commodity via a formal process, but where the unit of money has no intrinsic value itself. In other words, paper money that is backed by gold and can be exchanged for that gold at a fixed rate is representative money. So a paper bill represents (and can be exchanged for) the equivalent value of the gold that backs it. While the US was under the gold standard, the USD was a form of representative money.
• Fiat money – Fiat money is a form of money that has no intrinsic value and is not backed by a commodity, i.e., it does not represent the equivalent value of an underlying commodity. The value of fiat money is backed by the government that issues it and is accepted as a form of payment because there is an agreement on how much a specific currency is worth. Almost all modern currencies, from the Chinese yuan to the Brazilian real, are considered fiat money.

To simplify, commodity money is made from a physical commodity and has intrinsic value, representative money has no intrinsic value but represents a commodity that has intrinsic value and can be redeemed for it, while fiat currency has no intrinsic value and does not represent a commodity but is given value as a unit of exchange by the institution that issues it.

Examples of Use of Commodity Money

The most common example of commodity money throughout history is the use of metal coins, like gold, silver, or copper. Silver coins based on the Spanish dollar are likely the best example of commodity money in the Americas.

But that is far from the only example of the use of commodity money. For instance, beaver pelts were the main unit of exchange in the area around Hudson’s Bay in Canada for fur traders in the 18th century.

This system came about because the First Nations were not interested in exchanging goods for precious-metal coins, so they needed to find another medium of exchange – the beaver pelts. They even had an exchange rate set up, e.g., 5 pounds of sugar were worth 1 beaver pelt while 1 gun cost 12 beaver pelts.

Eventually, even that commodity money system evolved. For convenience, Hudson Bay post managers started issuing stamped copper or brass tokens in different sizes – these were called made beaver coins. The largest token represented the pelt of one adult male beaver in good condition. The smaller tokens represented smaller pelts. Thus, the commodity money system of the fur traders evolved into a combined commodity and representative money system over time.

In modern times, it may seem like commodity money is a historical occurrence, given that almost all countries use representative or, more commonly, fiat money. But that is not the case – commodity money can exist alongside other money categories.

Cigarettes are a common form of commodity money when other types of currency are prohibited. For example, they were often used in prisons in the US as a unit of exchange before smoking was banned in prison in the early 2000s.

While the line where a commodity becomes a currency can be debated, generally speaking, whenever a single commodity is recognized by a population as a unit of exchange for goods or services, it can be considered commodity money. Source

Die Making at the U.S. Mint

 

This B-Roll begins with the process of making "hubs," which is done by CNC (computer numerically controlled) machines using cutting tools. Once a master hub is machined, the Mint uses it to create dies, which have negative images of the coin's front or back, and will be used to strike the coin. Coin presses use 35-100 tons of pressure (depending on denomination of the coin) to leave the final impression on the coin.

Once the Secretary of the Treasury approves a design, U.S. Mint medallic artists turn the line drawing into a sculpted piece of art using clay, plaster, or digital software. A machine engraves the design onto a steel hub, which shows the positive image the way the artist created it. The Mint transfers the image between several generations of hubs and dies in order to create the working dies that actually strike the coins. Dies are like a photo negative, displaying the design in reverse. When the dies stamp the coins or medals, the positive image transfers onto the blank.