a brief meditation on the front sides of our national currency
I'm sitting here counting out dimes, seperating out all my change, counting it up like Scrooge McDuck in little piles all over the place, and meticulously recording how much I have, because I don't have a job and consequently, I am debilitatingly poor. But I have this collection of nickles and pennies, and also, the rare but beloved dimes and quarters. There's probably a 2:1 ratio in favor of nickles/pennies, though.
Anyway, I'm looking at dimes, thinking about how they want to put Reagan on it; bullshit. Because the dime is a glorious, underappreciated little coin. Find one. Look at it. It is pretty visually arresting... but also, paradoxically... it seems to just disappear from my fiscal consciousness. When I see a quarter on the street, I bend down and grab it; I rarely do this with pennies... for nickles, only occasionally. But the dime escapes my imagination almost entirely; I rarely see one around, and if I saw one, I wouldn't take note of this. It is very physically unimposing; there is real substance to a quarter, and the nickle is deceptively bulky; stocky and thick, built like a fire plug.
The penny is precisely the right size, shape, and weight for what it is.
The dime, though, is almost ethereal; thin, small, light. Smaller than both the penny and the nickle, it exceeds the monetary value of both; vastly exceeds the value, in the case of the penny, an entire order of magnitude greater; as great a gap exists between the dime and the penny as exists between the dollar and the dime, or the Hamilton and the Washington.
The profile of Roosevelt is very dignified, but also looks good humored, unlike the gaunt Jefferson, the austere and somewhat overbearing image of Washington, and the practically invisible visage of Lincoln. (Interesting: Washington and Roosevelt are not wearing clothes, they're just heads and necks; Jefferson appears to be wearing some kind of shirt - its from his shoulders up. Lincoln is in a shirt too, though his image is from the chest up.)
Washington looks like a marble bust from an abandoned temple; Jefferson looks like the hokey image on a children's book about history. Lincoln, in bronze, is difficult to make out. But you can see Roosevelt's jutting and clenched jaw, the little turkey-gobbler of skin beneath his chin, the part in his hair, the twist of the distinctive smile-grimace. If you look extremely closely, one can see his eyes. There is a remarkable amount of detailwork on the mini-form dime.
I also prefer it to the nickle and the penny because it follows a design scheme that is roughly comparable to the quarter; while all coins have 'Liberty', 'In God We Trust', the date of minting and the location of minting (recorded as a small letter... many of the coins I am examining bear a P, meaning they were minted in Philadelphia). The dime and the quarter have LIBERTY in all caps, along the top of the coin (though in the dime its about twenty degrees to the side, making room for Roosevelts head), 'In God We Trust' located low and to the left, the date located low and to the right on the dime, and right below Washington's head on the quarter. The penny has IN GOD WE TRUST in miniscule caps along the top, Liberty to the left, the date to the lower right. The nickle bears IN GOD WE TRUST in miniscule caps along the left side, LIBERTY and the date of manufacture along the right side. There is something about a unified design scheme that I like...
Anyway, we have cool currency. Lets not put Reagan on the dime; the dime is fine. Nothing is fucking wrong with the dime, all partisan politics aside. The dime looks good, and has a certain quality to it that I'm having difficulty putting into words. It is both invisible and visually striking, that's what I'm saying. Its fine, don't fuck it up, assholes.
The dime looks good.
The nickle, on the other hand.
I think my personal aversion to nickles is in no way related to the common complaints; too thick, too clumsy, not worth as much as a quarter, why bother? Yet, its .5, you know? Half of ten, and we're on a base ten system. It should be an extremely versatile coin, agile in the sense that its value is, well, a valuable number, but not too large (like twenty five cents) to become unwieldy - a handy five percent of one US Dollar. In terms of microcosmic financial interactions, those occuring on the scale of pocket change, the nickle would be as valueable as the five dollar bill, in a logical world. But this is certainly not a logical world, and the nickle is just a thick zinc-plated disk one flicks at the back of people's heads.
Maybe because our modern pricing tends not to charge, say, 2.15 for something, going instead straight to 2.25 or maybe even 2.50, we don't appreciate it.
Maybe it just looks kind of dumb.
At any rate, my aversion is different; it is in no small part because nickles are the favored coin of pranksters who glue currency to the ground for ha-has, to see spendthrifts bend down, raggedly chewed fingernails grasping vainly at concrete or hardwood, big fat ass waving in the air as they struggle for that precious five percent of an increasingly devalued dollar. It isn't dignified.
Anyway, I'm looking at dimes, thinking about how they want to put Reagan on it; bullshit. Because the dime is a glorious, underappreciated little coin. Find one. Look at it. It is pretty visually arresting... but also, paradoxically... it seems to just disappear from my fiscal consciousness. When I see a quarter on the street, I bend down and grab it; I rarely do this with pennies... for nickles, only occasionally. But the dime escapes my imagination almost entirely; I rarely see one around, and if I saw one, I wouldn't take note of this. It is very physically unimposing; there is real substance to a quarter, and the nickle is deceptively bulky; stocky and thick, built like a fire plug.
The penny is precisely the right size, shape, and weight for what it is.
The dime, though, is almost ethereal; thin, small, light. Smaller than both the penny and the nickle, it exceeds the monetary value of both; vastly exceeds the value, in the case of the penny, an entire order of magnitude greater; as great a gap exists between the dime and the penny as exists between the dollar and the dime, or the Hamilton and the Washington.
The profile of Roosevelt is very dignified, but also looks good humored, unlike the gaunt Jefferson, the austere and somewhat overbearing image of Washington, and the practically invisible visage of Lincoln. (Interesting: Washington and Roosevelt are not wearing clothes, they're just heads and necks; Jefferson appears to be wearing some kind of shirt - its from his shoulders up. Lincoln is in a shirt too, though his image is from the chest up.)
Washington looks like a marble bust from an abandoned temple; Jefferson looks like the hokey image on a children's book about history. Lincoln, in bronze, is difficult to make out. But you can see Roosevelt's jutting and clenched jaw, the little turkey-gobbler of skin beneath his chin, the part in his hair, the twist of the distinctive smile-grimace. If you look extremely closely, one can see his eyes. There is a remarkable amount of detailwork on the mini-form dime.
I also prefer it to the nickle and the penny because it follows a design scheme that is roughly comparable to the quarter; while all coins have 'Liberty', 'In God We Trust', the date of minting and the location of minting (recorded as a small letter... many of the coins I am examining bear a P, meaning they were minted in Philadelphia). The dime and the quarter have LIBERTY in all caps, along the top of the coin (though in the dime its about twenty degrees to the side, making room for Roosevelts head), 'In God We Trust' located low and to the left, the date located low and to the right on the dime, and right below Washington's head on the quarter. The penny has IN GOD WE TRUST in miniscule caps along the top, Liberty to the left, the date to the lower right. The nickle bears IN GOD WE TRUST in miniscule caps along the left side, LIBERTY and the date of manufacture along the right side. There is something about a unified design scheme that I like...
Anyway, we have cool currency. Lets not put Reagan on the dime; the dime is fine. Nothing is fucking wrong with the dime, all partisan politics aside. The dime looks good, and has a certain quality to it that I'm having difficulty putting into words. It is both invisible and visually striking, that's what I'm saying. Its fine, don't fuck it up, assholes.
The dime looks good.
The nickle, on the other hand.
I think my personal aversion to nickles is in no way related to the common complaints; too thick, too clumsy, not worth as much as a quarter, why bother? Yet, its .5, you know? Half of ten, and we're on a base ten system. It should be an extremely versatile coin, agile in the sense that its value is, well, a valuable number, but not too large (like twenty five cents) to become unwieldy - a handy five percent of one US Dollar. In terms of microcosmic financial interactions, those occuring on the scale of pocket change, the nickle would be as valueable as the five dollar bill, in a logical world. But this is certainly not a logical world, and the nickle is just a thick zinc-plated disk one flicks at the back of people's heads.
Maybe because our modern pricing tends not to charge, say, 2.15 for something, going instead straight to 2.25 or maybe even 2.50, we don't appreciate it.
Maybe it just looks kind of dumb.
At any rate, my aversion is different; it is in no small part because nickles are the favored coin of pranksters who glue currency to the ground for ha-has, to see spendthrifts bend down, raggedly chewed fingernails grasping vainly at concrete or hardwood, big fat ass waving in the air as they struggle for that precious five percent of an increasingly devalued dollar. It isn't dignified.