Wall Street Journal: Coins are Good as Junk
Pennsylvania waste management company Reworld makes money by reclaiming coins that somehow end up in the trash.
The 100th anniversary of National Coin Week (April 21-27) opened with a rather startling remark appearing in an April 18 Wall Street Journal article proclaiming, “Coins are good as junk for many Americans.” The article, which reaches an investor-oriented audience with little interest in collecting, was meant to show how the Pennsylvania waste management company Reworld makes money by reclaiming coins that somehow ended up in the trash. The NCW theme for this year is “Money is history you can hold in your hands.” It doesn’t sound like the public wants to hold coins in their hands if you read the newspaper story.
There are some important things in the article that need to be considered. The article addresses how coins were specie and are now fiat money. The article illustrates just how little purchasing power coins now have when compared to 1964, the last year of 0.900 fine silver coin production in the United States. Our fiat monetary system depreciates because it is fiat – it is disconnected from anything of tangible value. In March, production at the U.S. Mint dropped to 72 percent of what was produced during March one year earlier. Likewise, February’s production dropped to 48.4 percent of what it had been in February 2023.
All is not doom and gloom. It is handy to view what the non-collecting public reads and perhaps accepts as gospel, but we also know the hobby is healthy, with people finding our circulating commemorative quarters to be an important entry point. The answer is obvious. Follow the example of what other countries are doing. Low-denomination coins of little consequence cease to be minted, while higher-denomination coins replace low-denomination bank notes due to the superior durability of coins. Electronic payments are a substitute for some physical cash, but just as with checks and plastic cards, they will never fully replace coins – even if modern coins are fiat money.
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