About a week ago, a person named Kellen Hoard who served as a Representative of the General Public on the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee (CCAC) answered some questions on Reddit in an AMA. Evidently the CCAS was established in 2003 to advise the Secretary of the Treasury on US coin designs.
Now if you are like me, you thought that while the Mint is a bureau under the Department of Treasury, it had some independence , but I guess not, and I guess furthermore this new organization was created outside the mint to advise the Treasury more directly on new coins.
Whew... confusing.
But anyway, the AMA was fairly interesting. She was fairly forthcoming with answers.
Many many questions asked the very thing that many of us have in this group: when are dead presidents going away and Liberty coming back?
Her answer to these questions was both surprising and disappointing. The surprising part was that Liberty designs are coming back for the semiquincentennial release of many coins next year. (2026 being the 250th anniversary of America). Wow! She showed off some of the designs recommended by the CCAC and they are very cool!
Now if you Google "semiquincentennial US coin proposals" or something like that, you will see many more designs. Some of confusing ones, such as honoring civil rights or women's suffrage. There is nothing wrong with those things but neither topic has anything to do with the founding of America. The above photos were the ones shared in the AMA thread, so maybe some of the other proposals you find floating around the net have already been eliminated. Anyway especially that first Liberty design for the dime I shared above looks wonderful and I can't see how anyone would object to it.
That aside, the bad point here is that Kellen said that the next year (2027) will probably revert to the previous presidents designs unless Congress steps in. In other words, the mint is being too wimpy and won't push for these designs to be permanent and is going to pass the buck to Congress. And we know they won't do anything, so it will be back to the status quo. Oh well. But at least for one year we can have some pretty cool coins!
If this plan is allowed, then I'll definitely be ordering a proof set of coins for 2026.
Another thing that came up is that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is evidently a huge coin collector, so much so that he was a member of the CCAC for a year in 2017.
So in addition to playing for the Lakers during his vacations from the airline industry, he also is a coin guy! Kind of cool.
Anyway, here is the AMA if you want to go read through it.
Thoughts?
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David is an American teacher and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Mastodon. |
