I normally wouldn’t have, either. Typically I put my change in a piggy bank at home, to be taken eventually to the bank and put in their coin machine, but I also have a small plastic container of change that I keep on my desk for use in the vending machines and I just happened to be counting out 16 dimes (Combos are $0.80 each grin). The swastika caught my eye, though in that first second I didn’t know what I was looking at … I have to admit that I briefly got excited, thinking maybe I’d discovered a “mistake” that might be worth something! (Well, something more than $0.10. ;)).
Thanks! It’s a new camera, and my first time using the macro feature. I’m quite happy with the way the photos turned out.
I wondered that, myself. I can’t imagine any way that someone could trace the dime. The only “official” use I could see it having is if some agency already knew who was doing it and had a few other stamped dimes, and could use another one in the evidence pile.
Any investigation into the similar problem of counterfeiting begins with people calling the authorities, and talking to the nice Secret Service agent[s] who show up. Basically your report of a Nazi dime would constitute a data point – who knows, possibly the first one. If enough people notice their doctored coins in a timely fashion and report them, the Service can begin to puzzle out some distribution points or nodes.
For sure, it can’t be easy to crack these cases, but they manage to bust conventional counterfeiters, so it can be done. I imagine the desecrated dimes will be harder clamp down on because people rarely scrutinize their coins (and thus won’t likely spot the dimes until after the transaction is done and perhaps untraceable); also, a desecrated dime is still spendable and even if it wasn’t would cost you a lot less than, say, a fake twenty.
I wonder, given that this involves the image of FDR, if this couldn’t be prosecuted under hate-crimes legislation, some statute addressing the desecration of federal monuments, or even under an obscure provision of the alien and sedition acts, or something. I don’t think the worst crime here is the mutilation of coins, but the more specific pro-Nazi desecration of FDR’s image, in the manner of a hypothetical spray-painted swastika graffitti on the FDR monument in Washington, D.C.
The Scrivener made me curious enough to call the US Department of the Treasury just now, where I was transferred to the department that deals with mutilated money (their phrase; I used “defaced currency”): if currency is defaced, there is no investigation or inquiry. The most that happens is you can send it to Treasury with an explanation, and if at least 51% of the currency is viable they will redeem it (send you a replacement). The woman I talked with said that coins are handled by the US Mint, but I’m not going to bother calling them – I imagine that their answer will be the same.
The nature of this defacement is disturbing, but it’s really no more serious than someone writing on a dollar bill. Saying that counterfeiting is “a similar problem” seems a bit much, IMO. As mentioned earlier, the dime is still legal tender.
I’m glad you followed up but I’m dismayed by the blase attitude of our government in [in]action.
Perhaps the best thing would be for everyone who discovers such defaced coins to remove them from circulation, either by retaining them as keepsakes or by throwing them away – given that catching Neo-Nazis and forcibly tattooing them with the Star of David, etc. is pretty much out of the question.
WOW. You really think the person who did this should serve prison time?
I think we can all agree Neo-Nazis are a bunch of retards. Defacing a 10 cent coin with a stamp is a waste of time, it proves nothing and gets Hitler Jr. nowhere.
Isn’t America supposed to be about believing what you want and saying what you want even if the things you believe in are retared?
But prison time for this? Nailing the person for a hate crime? Come on man.
How about all those “Where is George” bill stampers? Do they get prison time as well?
I don’t mean to be blunt, but IMO your views are closer to a Nazi viewpoint than the “American idea”.
