I live in a largely "cash free society." I use credit cards for everything, and basically only need money for poker nights. But I didn't realize how successful I'd been in this cashless endeavor until a piece of junk mail arrived this past week.
The letter had a penny glued inside, visible through a little window. I was going to just toss the letter in the recycling, but figured I should fish the penny out. So I opened it up, pulled the penny off the paper...
And then thought I had a fake penny. The front looked right, but in place of the Lincoln Memorial on the back was this cartoonish looking shield. I was completely perplexed. Then I considered the fact that it was well after the whole "state quarter" program had been continued to territories that I actually saw quarters for places like Guam and American Samoa. Was it possible I'd missed a penny redesign?
Sure enough, that's exactly what happened. This new obverse design appeared on all 2010 pennies, but living in my cash free society, I'd made it all the way through the year without ever seeing one.
Pretty ugly, if you ask me.
3 comments:
You use a credit card even to pay for, say, a meal at the mall?
Or the occasional ice cream cone on a hot summer day?
Wow. I'm not there yet.
FKL
Um... I am NOT a cash free kinda guy, but I missed this completely as well. I just never look at my pennies to make sure they're real, if they aren't I guess I just don't care. What kind of lazy ass blogger doesn't give us uninformed a picture? Now MY lazy ass has to google this and if I wanted to research stuff myself I wouldn't read your blog... I don't come for the movie reviews.
Seriously though, I'm in favor of doing away with pennies entirely. Would anyone really mind if all of their cash transactions were rounded to the nearest nickel (or even dime... heck, I'd personally go nearest quarter without batting an eye). I certainly don't think with everything going on we should be spending any resources redesigning them for pity's sake.
What is this "cash" you speak of? Let's see...Pennies, are those those brown little coins I toss into the parking lot in an attempt to spread some luck or occasionally use to run the electric horse at the grocery store?
Seriously though, get rid of it. It's the aliens' way to track your activities - they just didn't get the art right.
BTW, I think Snarky Smurf spent more time complaining about having to Google a picture than it would have taken to Google the picture. Ah...crotchety goodness.
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