Money Museum

10/16/2026

Today's Feature: 1976 S Washington Bicentennial Quarter - ANA 1980.27.3 | Object: # 201 🇺🇸

For the first time since its introduction in 1932, the Washington quarter received a new reverse. Designed by Jack L. Ahr, the colonial drummer represented the ordinary Americans who fought for independence. His design was selected through a nationwide competition that attracted 884 submissions for the three Bicentennial denominations.

Nearly 2 billion Bicentennial quarters were struck across two years. Special 40% silver versions were also produced for collectors in Proof and Uncirculated sets. Ahr also designed the obverse of the 1976 ANA conventional medal, featuring the Statue of Liberty.

💬 If you had entered the Bicentennial coin design competition, what would you have put on the quarter?

Explore our (R)evolution in Currency features online today: https://www.money.org/money-museum/america250/

10/16/2026

Witch trials, royal theology, and circulating currency! 🪙

In this spooky episode of Worth Its Weight, Money Museum Curator Caroline Turco explores how King James VI and I used coinage to spread his complex worldview.

Listen now 🎧
https://www.money.org/worth-its-weight/

YouTube: https://youtu.be/EWkhjskACT0

10/15/2026

Today's Feature: 1975 S U.S. Proof Set - ANA 2009.32.76 | Object: # 200 🇺🇸

America's Bicentennial celebration began appearing on its money a year early. To commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the Mint introduced three special reverse designs, each bearing the dual date 1776–1976. Production began in 1975 and continued through 1976, meaning no quarters, half dollars, or dollars dated 1975 were produced.

Each design told a different part of America's story. The quarter's colonial drummer honored the Revolutionary generation, while the half dollar depicted Philadelphia's Independence Hall, where the Declaration was adopted. The dollar paired the Liberty Bell with the Moon, connecting America's founding ideals to its achievements in space exploration.

The 1975 Proof Set brought these commemoratives together with the regularly dated Lincoln cent, Jefferson nickel, and Roosevelt dime.

💬 Three Bicentennial designs, three interpretations of American independence. Which best captures the nation's first 200 years—and why?

Explore our (R)evolution in Currency features online today: https://www.money.org/money-museum/america250/

10/15/2026

Today's Feature: 1974 S Lincoln Memorial Cent ANA 1981.194.63 | Object: # 199 🇺🇸

This ordinary-looking Lincoln cent represents a coin that almost disappeared in 1974, at least in this form. Rising copper prices pushed the metal value of the cent close to its face value (can you imagine? 😂) leading the U.S. Mint to experiment with cheaper alternatives. Its preferred solution was an alloy containing 96% aluminum, and more than 1.5 million 1974 aluminum cents were struck while the Mint sought congressional approval for the change. However, Congress never authorized them, copper prices retreated, and nearly all of the experimental coins were recalled and destroyed.

Meanwhile, speculation about copper created another problem: Americans began hoarding the bronze cents already in circulation. At one point, demand for cents was running 200% above the previous year, prompting the Treasury to prohibit their melting or export. Mint Director Mary Brooks even launched a nationwide appeal asking Americans to empty their jars, drawers, and piggy banks and return their pennies to circulation. Billions of ordinary bronze cents like this one ultimately kept Lincoln in copper for another eight years, until rising costs finally prompted the switch to copper-plated zinc in 1982.

💬 If you were going to produce a U.S. aluminum coin, which denomination would you choose?

Explore our (R)evolution in Currency features online today: https://www.money.org/money-museum/america250/

10/13/2026

Today's Feature: 1973 S PF Jefferson Nickel - ANA 1984.72.665 | Object: # 198 🇺🇸

The S mintmark tells you something important about this nickel: it was made for collectors. Every 1973 S Jefferson nickel was struck as a Proof at San Francisco and originally issued in the annual U.S. Proof Set. More than 2.7 million were produced, typically displaying the sharp strike, mirrored fields, and frosted Cameo contrast that made Proof coins immediately distinguishable from the change in your pocket.

The 1973 Proof Set was also a first. With the addition of the Eisenhower dollar, it contained six coins—the first U.S. Proof Set to offer Proof examples of every circulating denomination from the cent through the dollar. By then, the Mint’s mailing list of “special coin customers” had grown from 1.2 million to more than 3 million people in just 2.5 years!

💬 If you find a 1973 nickel with an S mintmark, you know it’s a Proof. What other mintmark and date combinations immediately tell you something special about the coin?

Explore our (R)evolution in Currency features online today: https://www.money.org/money-museum/america250/

10/10/2026

Lots are posted! Time to place your bids! 🏛️🪙

From now until October 15, place your bids on duplicate, low-value items from the ANA's Edward C. Rochette Money Museum collection. (No permanent items from the collection are being sold.)

ANA members receive a 20% discount on any winning bids (excluding gold coins)! All proceeds are used to support the Museum's educational mission.

🔗 View auction lots here: https://www.ebay.com/str/moneymuseumdeaccessionauctions

This month's auction lots include:
➡️ 1971 FAO Coin Album. 52 Coins.
➡️ 1928 USA. 5 Dollars. Red Seal. Abraham Lincoln. Paper.
➡️ 1857 USA. Liberty Seated Dime. Philadelphia Mint. Silver (.900)
➡️ 1823 Peru. 1/4 Peso. Provisional Coinage. Copper.

🪙 Plus several other unique coins and treasures waiting to join your collection!

10/09/2026

New Weekly Weigh-In is here!

Happy Friday, coin lovers! 🎧

In this episode of The Weekly Weigh-In, a familiar collector tradition gets an unfamiliar price tag, new research revisits a famous coin’s ownership history, and a supposed rarity delivers a bit of a disappointment.

We are also covering funding opportunities for local coin clubs, an upcoming auction for young collectors, and a brand-new series making its debut right here on the podcast. And before we wrap things up, Canada decided to put an actual ghost on its currency... because apparently regular inflation just wasn’t frightening enough. 👻🪙

Tune in now on the ANA website or search for Worth Its Weight wherever you stream your podcasts!

Listen here ➡️ https://bit.ly/47Iqs9B

10/09/2026

Today's Feature: 1972 D Eisenhower Dollar Error Capped Die - ANA 1979.149.72 | Object: # 197 🇺🇸

Sometimes a mistake at the Mint doesn’t produce just one error—it produces a whole sequence of them. A die cap begins when a struck coin fails to eject and instead sticks to one of the dies. As the press continues operating, that trapped coin strikes the planchets that follow. With each blow, the struck coin spreads and stretches around the die, eventually taking on a bottle-cap or thimble-like shape. The resulting coins can show increasingly distorted, weak, or brockage-like impressions, preserving different stages of the same mechanical failure.

By the 1970s, errors like this were developing a collecting culture of their own. Organizations including the Numismatic Error Collectors of America (NECA) and Collectors of Numismatic Errors (CONE) connected specialists through publications such as Errorscope and The Errorgram, while Error Trends Coin Magazine helped document and popularize unusual Mint mistakes. Dealers such as John Devine—better known as “Lonesome John”—built national businesses around errors. What had once been dismissed simply as defective money was becoming a recognized numismatic specialty. Collectors weren’t just finding mistakes anymore; they were learning to reconstruct how the Mint made them.

💬 Put your error-detective skills to work: what do you think happened at the press to create this coin?

Explore our (R)evolution in Currency features online today: https://www.money.org/money-museum/america250/

10/08/2026

Today's Feature: 1971 S Eisenhower Dollar - ANA 1989.85.134 | Object: # 196 🇺🇸

In 1971, the dollar coin returned after a 35-year absence. No U.S. dollar coins had been struck for circulation since the final Peace dollars of 1935. The new coin honored President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who died in 1969, while its reverse celebrated a recent American achievement: the Apollo 11 Moon landing. Chief Engraver Frank Gasparro adapted astronaut Michael Collins’s mission insignia, showing an eagle descending onto the lunar surface with an olive branch in its talons. Earth hangs in the distance.

But there were really two Eisenhower dollars. Coins intended for circulation were copper-nickel clad, while the San Francisco Mint produced special 40% silver-clad dollars exclusively for collectors in both Uncirculated and Proof finishes. The 1971 S, therefore, continued a shift already visible in the 1970 D Kennedy half: the Mint was developing versions of regular U.S. denominations specifically for the collector market. Sold in distinctive packaging, the Uncirculated silver dollars soon acquired a collector nickname that remains familiar today—the “Blue Ikes.”

💬 If you were designing the Eisenhower dollar, would you pair Ike with Apollo 11? Or would you choose something from Eisenhower’s own life for the reverse? Or, even more interestingly, would you keep the reverse but change the historical figure on the obverse?

Explore our (R)evolution in Currency features online today: https://www.money.org/money-museum/america250/