Refrigerator Magnet Coins

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Mixed Set
($26 plus S&H)
Coins of the World

Regional Sets
($29.95 plus S&H)

Arabic Script
Asia
Australia/New Zealand
Austria
Belgium
Caribbean (Various)
Czechoslovakia
France
Germany, East and West
Hungary
Mediterranean
Portugal
Scandinavia
South America
Spain
United Kingdom
Yugoslavia

History

Coins seem to have originated in the 7th century B.C., in the ancient kingdom of Lydia. (It's part of Turkey nowadays.) Back then the value of a coin was equal to the value of the metal in it. So by stamping a picture on each side, the king was basically saying that the metal was guaranteed to be of a certain weight.

That's why coins eventually developed ridged edges. The ridges let you know whether somebody had been shaving little bits off the sides. That's not a big deal now, when a coin's value has nothing to do with its content. But you can see where it would once have been a problem.

Governments quickly figured out the propaganda value of coins. Folks didn't have TVs, radios, Internet or even newspapers in ancient times. So putting your face on the money was a great way to let everybody know who was boss. As soon as you became king, be it by lawful accession, murder, invasion or coup, one of the first things you did was start re-minting all the money you could lay your hands on. Brutus and his friends minted coins celebrating the murder of Julius Caesar -- you can buy one at a coin shop -- as part of their attempt to set themselves up as the new Roman government.

The Romans also figured out how to run deficit budgets in an era was there was no such thing as imaginary money. The government would mint bronze coins, dip them in silver, and pass them off as the real deal. That's why you bite a coin to see if it's real -- you're trying to see if there's bronze underneath.

The famous Pieces of Eight that pirates loved so much were gold and silver Spanish coins minted with a cross on each one. Pirates always divvied up the loot as soon as the battle was over (There's no such thing as buried pirate treasure; are you kidding?) and the cross made it easy to chop the coins into eight handy, roughly equal-sized pieces.

"Two bits, four bits, six bits; a dollar." That phrase is a reference to chopping up coins. Spanish coins -- pieces of eight -- were legal tender in the United States until 1857. It was all about the value of the metal.

Metal -- especially the more valuable metals like silver, gold and copper -- has always been highly recycled. And people have been making coins for 2700 years now. When you're admiring your MagnetiCoin refrigerator magnets, and perhaps thinking about all the places those coins traveled and all of the pockets they've been in, consider this: Some small portion of the metal in many of those those refrigerator magnets has most likely been in other coins from other eras, some bearing the faces of kings that the world no longer remembers.