Concerns about security and profit motivate government treasuries to continually revise coins and bills. The US government has issued only coins with natural metal tones, but radiant hand-colored coins sometimes appear in pocket change, most often the glossy red “house quarters” that establishments give out so customers can play jukeboxes, pool, pinball, and video games for free. This marked-quarters gimmick not only attracts customers, it helps keep them from spending the free money on their bar tab. {Fig. 23, four corners} Others profit by colorizing coins, most notably the Royal Canadian Mint, which in 2010 released a twenty-dollar silver coin embedded with purple Swarovski crystals. Maybe someday the US Mint will follow the Bureau of Engraving and Printing’s example and, like Canada, enliven its palette.
US government websites are surprisingly transparent about moneymaking technologies—they want the public to know how to protect itself—but less revealing about the success of their crime-prevention strategies. One wonders about the effectiveness of the elaborate new colors and proprietary inks. Do particolored bills have unintended negative effects, such as making high-denomination money easier to spot and steal? Do people with low vision need higher-relief engravings to distinguish the denominations, or are they better served by the addition of large, colored numerals or by denomination-identifying apps like the BEP’s EyeNote? Does adding color to US currency make things more difficult for forgers, or will improvements in scanning technology render colorization ineffectual? Will the pot of gold at the end of the Treasury’s rainbow, a counterfeit-proof currency, ever be realized? Color me skeptical.
Fig. 23
Found colorful quarters
CHAPTER
9
FROGSKINS AND CARTWHEELS
Nicknames for Money
MONEY IS A HUMAN INVENTION. It gleams as it decays, singing its siren song 24-7-365. As money is many things to many people, it goes by many names. Whether banker or gangster, spender or saver, everyone uses $lang. I love collecting $obriquets—the funnier, coarser, and more affectionate, farfetched, and born of secrecy, the better.
Here’s my running list:
A
Abe
Abraham
Ag
Au
B
bacon
bank
banknote
bankroll
batter
beans
Benjamin
Benjie
berries
big one
bill
bit
black eagle
blueback
bob
Bolivars
bones
boodle
bottom dollar
bread
bread and honey
breeches
buck
buckaroo
bullion
buzzard dollar
C
C-note
cabbage
cake
capital
cartwheel
cash
CF
chalupas
cheddar
cheddar cheese
cheese
chicken fat
chicken feed
chicken scratch
chinchilla
ching ching
chink
chump change
chunky
cizzash
clams
cold hard cash
collards
commas
copper
cream
cream cheese
D
dead presidents
dibs
dime
dinar
dinero
do-it
dolluh
dolo
double eagle
dough
dub
ducat
dust
F
farthing
fetti
fin
five spot
fiver
flash note
folding money
folding stuff
FRN
frogskins
G
G
G-stacks
get
gold
good sum
Gouda
grand
gravy
green
green stuff
greenback
groat
Gucci
guinea
gwop
gwopington
H
half sawbuck
half a rock
horse blanket
hundo
hundy
hunnert
I
ingot
J
jack
Jackson
K
K
ka-ching
kale
kite
kitty
L
lana
large
lettuce
lolly
long bit
long green
loot
lucci
lucre
lump sum
M
M
mad stacks
mazuma
mint
mite
moolah
mooney
mopus
moss
N
nickel
nickel note
note
nuff-nuff
nugget
O
orange peel
P
paper
pelf
penny
peso
phony baloney
pile
plata
plug nickel
plum
pocket
pound
proceeds
purse
R
ready
receipts
red
red cent
rent
rhino
rice
riches
Roanoke
rock
roll
rouleau
round sum
rutabaga
S
salt
sawbuck
scoots
scratch
scrilla
scroll
seawant
shekel
shells
shinplaster
short bit
silver
simoleon
sinews of war
sister
skins
slip
slug
smacker
smackeroo
smacks
sou
sourdough
specie
spondoolies
spondulicks
spreadalotta
stacks
sterling
stiver
sum
sum total
T
ten spot
tenner
tester
thundo
tin
toadskins
treasure
V
V
vee
W
wad
wagon wheel
wampum
watermelon
wealth
wherewithal
wonga
Y
yaper
yard
yayber
yen
CHAPTER
10
ILLUSTRATED TAXONOMY
and Glossary of Mutilated Money
PEOPLE OF ALL TYPES participate in the mutilation of money: warriors and lovers, hoboes and bankers, police and vandals alike. Whether intentionally or by the tiniest of changes we unconsciously cause by handling bills and coins, we all alter money.
The most egregious mutilators of money are
governments. In 31 CE, when Sejanus (soldier and advisor to the Roman emperor Tiberius) failed to overthrow Tiberius, he was not only executed, he was caused to suffer damnatio memoriae. This meant that, among other punishments, the government obliterated his name from coins that had been created in his honor and continued to circulate them. Since at least the seventeenth century, governments have recalibrated bills and adjusted the weight of coins to meet fluctuating standards. Instead of paying for expensive new engravings every time change is necessitated by inflation or politics, for example, governments may create “new” currency by re-engraving existing money.
The US Mint’s coin production numbers mirror my own holdings: a preponderance of pennies, followed by quarters, nickels, and then dimes.1 {Figs. 23, 24, 25; also see front and back covers, page 10} I have only three marred dollar coins, and, until recently, had no seriously worn half dollars. So it was exciting to learn that in 2003 the mint started using Dutch “waffling” machines to crush defective brand-new coins, thus canceling their monetary value. Since the crushed coins are no longer legal tender, this in-house demolition eliminates the need for mint police to escort rejected coinage to the private vendors who melt and recycle US coin metal. When I learned that the mint does not object to the trade of these former coins, because they have been paid for by the vendors and the waffled discs are no longer considered US government property, I bought a crumpled Kennedy half dollar from Waffle Coins Inc. of Bridgewater, New Jersey, to fill the gap in my collection.2 {Fig. 26} It is the only mutilated coin for which I have paid more than face value. I love it because of the striking damage done by the mint, and because even though the coin is beyond repair, it comes with an official numismatic grade of “brilliant uncirculated.”
Fig. 24
Ten pretty, mutilated nickels
Fig. 25
Twenty-one exquisitely ugly dimes
Fig. 26
A John F. Kennedy half dollar intentionally mutilated by the US Mint (left). Standard Kennedy half (right).
Money goes everywhere and can react with any and all substances on earth, whether intentionally, erroneously, or naturally. Cash can be ruined by forces of nature or by machines of any description. The damage, whether benign or pernicious, can range from minor to severe, from common to unprecedented. Sometimes money is even mutilated for practical purposes: authenticators of coins must sometimes use invasive methods.
I once saw an elderly man bent over the middle of Fifty-Sixth Street in Woodside, Queens, so I asked if he was OK. He pointed to his nearby apartment and explained, “I’m wedging in a nickel to stop the damn sewer cap from clanging every time a car rolls by.” I returned a few days later to check; the sewer cap was snugly in place and the noiseproofing nickel had disappeared. Beyond such practical, nonfiscal use, money is also deployed for aesthetic, experimental, fraudulent, symbolic, and other purposes, as noted in the following glossary of causes of money mutilation not covered elsewhere in this book:
Accessories: Coins can be altered and incorporated as design features of belts, purses, et cetera.
Advertising: Despite federal law prohibiting advertising via writing, printing, or otherwise impressing upon or attaching materials to coins and currency, there are more than 13,500 known types of merchant-countermarked coins (coins to which corporate names and advertising have been added).3 Various modern methods exist for marking banknotes, such as the use of adhesive labels. It is natural for companies to capitalize on the fact that money circulates widely. {Figs. 27, 28}
Fig. 27
This 1840 Braided Hair Large Cent bears the merchant countermarks “L. Coon” on the front and “Abbott” on the back.
Fig. 28
The theme of the three-part 2004 miniseries advertised on this one-dollar bill was illegal global trafficking.
Aerugo: The rust of metal, especially brass or copper. Also known as verdigris.
Armor: Even after a government has gone belly-up and its coins no longer have fiscal value, the solid discs of metal can be pierced, strung, and worn by warriors as chain mail. This has been a common practice in Croatia and parts of the Arab world.
Bag toning: Bright rainbow colors on an otherwise pristine coin, created when coins are pressed for a long time against the sulfurous material used in certain cloth coin bags.
Bar tricks: Drinkers like to make bets on questions like whether it’s possible to cut a banknote (still in one piece) in such a way that a person can step through the resulting hole. (It can be done.)
Batteries: Coins made of various metals can be sandwiched between saltwater-laden pads to make electric batteries.
Blistering: Welder’s torches are sometimes used to create strange surfaces on coins, which may be polished to make the distortions look like mint errors.
Carbon spotting: Brown to black oxidation marks.
Chop mark: A small, rubber-stamped symbol on currency made by international bankers or money exchangers to indicate that they have examined and found a bill genuine. This can eliminate duplicating verification efforts and is equivalent to a countermark on a coin. Most often found on large-denomination bills.4 {Fig. 29}
Fig. 29
Two rubber-stamped chop marks of unknown meaning on a twenty-dollar bill
Cleaning: The most common cause of banknote rejection by federal authorities is soiling. The primary source of soiling is human grease, known as sebum, which collects on bills as they pass from person to person. Rhode Island scientists Nabil M. Lawandy and Andrei Y. Smuk created a banknote washing chamber using the gas and liquid properties of supercritical carbon dioxide to clean bills without harming security features.5 The technique mitigates the spread of disease by removing organism colonies such as bacteria and could reduce central bank budgets for banknote replacement and also lessen the environmental impact of discarding unfit banknotes.
Contamination: Money exposed to or damaged by contaminants may emit offensive odors and pose health hazards and safety risks. Those seeking reimbursement must submit contaminated money in doubled autoclave bags akin to those used in medical sterilization machines. In cases of natural disasters, banks will often provide bags with moisture and oxygen barriers designed to provide leak and odor protection. Money exposed to any biological or chemical “bioterrorist agent” is handled separately by the Federal Reserve.
Counterfeit coins: Primarily to simulate rare coins, criminals make fakes with sand, clay, metal, and lost-wax casting processes and by altering genuine coins. While not always involving physical mutilation, counterfeiting can be seen as a form of philosophical mutilation in that the illegal practice can erode confidence and trust in currency.
Countermark: Governmental or nongovernmental stamping on a coin. Countermarks, also known as overstamps, are found on almost all silver coins of the Sultanates that circulated in Bengal from the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries. These were frequently revalued by currency traders and exchange brokers of the period, who used three basic types of countermarks to indicate they had vetted the coin in question: (1) marks made by small, light punches bearing graphic designs; (2) large, deep cancellation marks gouged by chisel; and (3) shallow, round holes made by testers.6
Cud: Numismatic term for an imperfection (usually a blob raised above the edge of a coin) caused by a crack, chip, or other damage to a coin-making die.
Debased: Having below-standard metal content.
Drawing: Banknotes are frequently tallied or doodled on or used for scratch paper. {Fig. 30} For an extensive collection of such alterations, see http://www.johnnyburrito.com/uglymoney.htm and http://www.memolition.com/2013/10/20/turning-money-into-art-19-pictures/.
Fig. 30
Several people added graffiti to this one-dollar bill.
Dropping: Coins can be intentionally or accidentally dropped from tall buildings or into storm drains, sewage systems, wishing wells, et cetera. Experts can spot the resultant bumps on coin rims.
Elongated cents: Souvenirs made by placing a cent in a mach
ine that flattens coins into ovals and embosses them with keepsake information. First introduced at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Dimes can also be elongated in these machines.
Embedding: Coins can be embedded in Lucite or other materials for display purposes.
Evidence: Money associated with a crime can be so marked by the authorities. {Fig. 31}
Fig. 31
The red rubber-stamping on this bill reads “EVIDENCE: IF PRESENTED NOTIFY N.Y.C. POLICE DEPT.”
Exonumia: Items akin to money, such as medals, scrip, tokens, wooden nickels, et cetera.
FIDO: An obsolete numismatic acronym for Freaks, Imperfections, Defects, and Oddities (i.e., “dogs”).
Folding: It takes four thousand double folds (forward and back) before a banknote begins to tear.
Food: Food or drink on money can cause decay and/or attract vermin.
Fusing: More than one coin or parts of coins may become stuck together, either in the minting process or with tar, glue, et cetera. Schemers have been known to intentionally laminate, glue, or otherwise brutalize and then intermingle real and fake banknotes to submit for redemption.
Garbage: Money can be accidentally discarded. According to May 2014 federal regulations, “No relief will be granted on account of lawfully held paper currency which has been totally destroyed.7
Gutter: Money can be trapped in silt- and debris-laden running water.
Hobo nickels: Sculptures that creatively turn coins into miniature bas-reliefs of skulls, cartoon characters, et cetera. The nickel’s size, thickness, and relative softness make it a favored coin for such alterations.8
Jewelry: Coins can be looped, chained, engraved, enameled, turned into amulets, et cetera.
Laundry: Coin-operated washing machines can mangle coins trapped in their water pumps.
Look-alikes: Objects such as a blob of chewing gum (particularly cinnamon gum), round of foil (particularly from tubes of mints), washer, or switch-box punch-out can be mistaken for a coin (even by my five-year-old, who has twenty-twenty vision). {Fig. 32}
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