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Keep the Change
by Harley J. Spiller
c.2015, Princeton Architectural Press
$19.95 / $27.95 Canada
112 pages
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Truth Contributor
Find a penny, pick it up.
Words of advice from your grandfather, for whom a penny was
worth bending over. For you, one cent doesn’t buy much, so
do you grab errant coins or step past them? What’s the deal
with a lousy penny, anyhow? Harley J. Spiller makes
it his hobby to know, and in Keep the Change,
he’ll tell you.
We humans are a curious bunch. There’s a good chance, for
instance, that you have fabric in your wallet, cloth you
could exchange for dinner. The fabric itself isn’t
worth much – surely not as much as printed numbers inked by
sixty tons of force might indicate. No, it’s the value we
assign to it that really matters.
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Dollar bills are made with “world-class” precision and
safeguards, each made of 75 percent cotton, 25 percent
special linen, measuring 2.61 inches by 6.14 inches by
0.0043 inches thick. “In 2012,” says Spiller, “more than
eight billion rectangles… soaked up close to three thousand
tons of ink to create just under three hundred and
fifty-nine billion dollars.” That ain’t chump change, and
the government constantly looks for ways to keep
counterfeiters from reproducing the fine details, glow
strips, and muted colors of foldable money. Even just
scanning a dollar bill into your computer, Spiller notes,
can result in a bit of unpleasantness…
And then there are the bits of metal you have in your pocket
or purse.
Copper has been prized for eons: some Native Americans
considered it sacred. The U.S. Mint begged to differ,
though, and didn’t declare copper to be legal tender until
1862 – which meant that the first copper pennies, produced
in 1792, couldn’t be deposited in a bank. Still, making
cents made sense: pennies were traded for and used by
slaves, and when Abraham Lincoln died, mourners turned
“Indianhead” coins into souvenirs. Abe’s portrait on the
penny proved to be even more popular: between 1909 and 2012,
nearly 500 billion pennies were minted, although many people
now jeer at the mere presence of a one-cent coin.
Did you know that banks sometimes literally throw money
away? Yep, and you’ll learn why (and more!) in Keep the
Change.
Since he was a young boy, museum professional and author
Harley J. Spiller has been a numismatist (coin collector)
with a focus on mangled and altered cash. In this
entertaining book, he nicely melds his passion and quirky
collection with photos and facts about money as a whole: its
history, the reasons why it looks as it does, and a large
list of alternates for the word “money.” Spiller’s shared
knowledge also fills in many cultural gaps to help readers
understand money’s role in society, and embracing his
glossary of terms will make you sound like the Big Wig of
Big Bucks.
While you’ll surely learn a thing or two here, the real
reason to read this book is to enjoy a lighthearted look at
currency, recovered and made. If that seems like great fun
to you, then find Keep the Change… and pick it up. |
