Franklin got on the half dollar in 1948. The Liberty half dollar (my choice for best looking U.S. coin) lasted until then.
I’ve seen those things for $15 at Target and another store. You have to mail in a certificate to get the coins. They actually do look nice on the outside, but the inside (map) is really cheesy. Not worth 15 bucks.
“I must leave this planet, if only for an hour.” – Antoine de St. Exupéry
Are you a turtle?
Dystopos: The TP question was worded poorly.
That quote is from http://www.frbsf.org/currency/iconography/portraits.html
To say that Pocahontas was the first Native-American woman to be honoredimplies to me she was the main theme. She wasn’t. And saying US currency probably means US Government currency, not a state issue or private issue prior to Federal banknotes in 1861.
Correction, sir! The Lincoln cent as we know it was introduced in 1959. Prior to that the obverse of the Lincoln cent featured two sheaves of wheat encircling the words “ONE CENT” and “The United States of America”.
With all the numismatists coming in on this one I’m surprised it wasn’t caught sooner… maybe I just didn’t give us all enough time 
All I wanna do is to thank you, even though I don’t know who you are…
There’s a Usenet meta-rule about spelling errors creeping into spelling corrections. Consider this an object lesson to all you potential spelling flamers out there.
We can only go by what the primary sources. Even by the standards of the day, both Lewis and Clark’s spelling was, ah, imaginative. They spelled the same words, including Sacagawea’s name, many different ways. But they always used a G, never a J.
Another thing (as is mentioned on that page I cited), using a J sound there would change the meaning of her name in Shoshone.
Well, I think we’ve hijacked this thread far enough.
“Scissors Defeats Rock”
– The Onion
In that case, I find that your most recent post exhibits contradictory premises.
In any case, I meant the correction in the goodest of natures (sic) in the same way that a kind stranger will occasionally curtail further embarrassment by pointing out an open zipper.
Oops. I should have said that we mainly go by the primary sources. These are supplemented by various lexicons of Hidatsu and Shoshoni. Anyway, if you’re really interested in Sacagawea’s name, read that page that I posted.
“Scissors Defeats Rock”
– The Onion
I don’t know where you’ve been, but these commercials are nothing new. Well, these are, but there have been plenty of coin commercials over the years. I mean, remember the Princess Di commemorative coin? There have been others, but I’ve had three hours of sleep and don’t want to go into the trouble of actual thinking right now. But I do remember plenty of these commercials over the years because I would always regard them with the same sense of amusement I took from the commemorative plate commercials and thinking of all the poor suckers buying them up thinking they could hock them at the flea market for 10 times what they paid.
However, there is somewhat noticable increase due to the whole state quarter deal. Someone saw an opportunity to make a bunch of money selling cardboard and was, of course, copied by a thousand more people who want their cut of the action. I mean, I don’t know how many idiots you know personally, but I know quite a few and every one of them is socking away every state quarter they come across. I know what they’re thinking – “Hey, these are different! They’re going to be worth something!” Yeah, in 20 years, they’re going to be worth a quarter. In 50 years, still a quarter. Maybe a hundred years from now they’re going to be worth 27 cents. After all, this is the general freaking currency, ferchrissakes.
Personally, I think the whole damn state quarter thing is a scam. The government knows the country’s full of dummies. Hell, they’ve been watering down our educational system for so long that they’ve ensured it. So they release five versions of the quarter each year for 10 years (actually, 10 versions if you count the Philadelphia and Denver mints separately). As they learned from the 1976 bicentennial quarter, folks are going to hoard a whole bunch of these things figuring them to be “worth something” someday. That money is taken out of circulation. Granted, it’s only quarters, but it’s still an increase in the amount of money taken out of circulation voluntarily. Following supply and demand, with fewer quarters being used as currency, the value of money rises because the supply is tightened. Therefore, the dollar rises and we pay off our debts to Japan and Co. that much quicker.
Now, having realized that I have wandered far off topic and have begun ranting irrationally, I will wander off mumbling and occasionally scratching the place in my head where the aliens put the chip in…
I believe that the idea of the commemorative quarters was actually the idea of some congressman (name unknown) or possibly someone else who talked him into supporting it. At any rate, he was the one pushing it, not the Treasury Dept.
As far as them being valuable, there are a number of minting errors that have been discovered. Notably the rotated die error which you can read about here.
“Scissors Defeats Rock”
– The Onion