I’ve gotten a couple of these Sacagawea dollar coins as change from various vending machines. I, like all the other bastards out there, kept the ones I got and didn’t circulate them. They were in beautiful condition when I got them, and were just sitting on my desk for a few months. The other day I took a close look at them for some reason, and was really shocked! The year 2000 dollar coins are so tarnished that the flat areas on the face aren’t even shiny. It’s really an ugly coin now. Then I compared it to the 76 Kennedy half-dollar that was sitting next to it, which is 24 years older, and looks beautiful and shiny.
So, didn’t the mint test these things out before they put them in our hands? Or is that golden coins just look crummier than silvery ones when they tarnish? Any numismatists out there with the straight dope?
You know, the SackofJahweedyah dollar is the first piece of money to feature a person of mixed breed, the baby (unless of course, you count the little Sally Hemmings Jr. visible in a upper left window on the back of the nickel).
I’ve left a sackie on my dresser for several months and while there’s a little bit of tarnish, it’s still fairly shiny. But try carrying one around in your pocket with other change for a couple weeks. Then it’ll quickly get a lot of tarnish.
The mint wants the sackie to become regular circulated money, but they seem to have failed to field test them before issuing them. Otherwise they would have rethought the composition.
I believe Sacagawea is the first slave pictured on an American coin.
Well, she wasn’t really a “slave” in the common use of the word. That is, she wasn’t working the fields in the South. IIRC she was captured by a rival tribe, which was an accepted part of aboriginal cultures in the Americas. I think she was sold to a Frenchman or French Canadian and had the baby, Jean-Baptiste with him. Technically she was a slave, but not a person imported from another country for the purpose of labour as we normally think of the word.
One of my co-workers thinks I’m nuts to spend sackies. She doesn’t like them at all.
Your “normal” slaves were also “captured by a rival tribe, which was an accepted part of aboriginal cultures”. These rival tribes in Africa then sold their slaves, some of which ended up in the US. Also, at that time, all or most of the US states allowed slavery. Slaves were not restricted to “working the fields in the South”.
In addition to slaves, indentured servants [sp?] were “imported from another country for the purpose of labour”. These servants had to work out their contracts with the person who imported them or they go to jail.
Starfish, when someone says “slave” in the United States, I think most people think of African-Americans. True, Sacagawea was a slave (at least to the tribe that captured her. She may have been the common-law wife of the father of her infant), but to make a statement that “Sacagawea is the first slave pictured on an American coin” will make the Teeming Masses think that she is an African American woman instead of an aboriginal American. This is how Urban Legends get started. Someone 50 years from now will be sending e-mails saying that “Sacagawea was Black because a friend of a friend said he read it on a message board a long time ago.”
I’m sure I’ve seen some 1999 SBA’s, though most of the ones I’ve gotten from stamp machines have been '79s.
I’d really like to see the new dollars in wider circulation.
Today the dollar bill is to my wallet as pennies are to my
pocket: a lot of bulk to carry and not a lot you can buy with it.
