![]() The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.A Long Island, New York investor mistakenly thought he could make a quick profit of at least several hundred dollars on an online purchase of coins from a vendor he found advertising at Two of the ten counterfeit American Eagle “silver” bullion coins received by a Long Island, New York buyer who responded to a seller’s advertisement on (Photo credit: Donn Pearlman.) This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at for further information. And if that happens, it'll upend nearly two centuries of tradition that started with Christian Gobrecht, which feels, frankly, a little Gobrechtian (ph).Ĭopyright © 2022 NPR. But there are these American women quarters being released over the next few years, and the mint is trying to allow for a little more artistic creativity, including allowing the artists to go with a numeral design if they want to. Pull some change out of your pocket, those little written out numbers on your coins - that's Gobrecht. The numeral design has now lasted for some 200 years. You know, I'm a modern artist, and here's how I'm going to interpret modern coinage.īLANCHARD: The thing is, once a style is established, it sticks. TUCKER: Maybe some of his artistic innovation was a way to strike back at that and just kind of say, I'm not your grandfather's coin designer. ![]() Remember? He was only the second engraver. Gobrecht changed that to half dime, spelled out.īLANCHARD: Now, we don't know why Gobrecht made this change. So a half dime, which was a denomination back in the day, would have been five C period. TUCKER: Before Gobrecht, it was a combination of numerals and abbreviated cent signs, for example. And more to the point of our listener Randy's question, there was another radical departure in Gobrecht's design - how the numbers were written. It becomes known as the liberty seated design. And the mint adopts it for, like, all of their silver coins. You know, she's seated, and she's very much in control of her destiny and her surroundings.īLANCHARD: She has this casual posture, flowing robes. ![]() TUCKER: It's during this period that Gobrecht starts to come up with all of these coin designs that are a radical departure from what others before him had done.īLANCHARD: Like, before Gobrecht, American coins had these formal, traditional designs - usually a woman in profile. But when that position opens up, he's passed over. ![]() And if you happened to be an artist in Philadelphia, then you would catch the eye of mint officials, as he did.īLANCHARD: So, Christian Gobrecht goes to work for the mint, and he wants to become the chief engraver. And his name is Christian Gobrecht.īLANCHARD: Christian Gobrecht was an artist born in the 1780s in Pennsylvania, and growing up, he was always drawing in journals and sketchbooks. He studies coins and money - a.k.a., he's a numismatist.ĭENNIS TUCKER: (Laughter) Well, I don't know if I would call him a culprit, but he's certainly a character of note. So, Planet Money, maybe you can solve this important mystery.īLANCHARD: We love a good mystery, so we decided to pull at this thread by talking to Dennis Tucker. coins? Instead, we spell out one cent, five cents and quarter dollar. Have you ever noticed there are not numbers on U.S. This is Randy Simpson from Livermore, Calif. coin design started with this somewhat innocuous listener question. Here's Dave Blanchard of NPR's Planet Money podcast.ĭAVE BLANCHARD, BYLINE: Our journey into the history of U.S. They honor people like Maya Angelou, Wilma Mankiller and Eleanor Roosevelt, and the redesign gave the mint a chance to rethink some odd little details of U.S.
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