8/7/2019 Afterthoughts: Mint Condition

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76 JANUARY 2010 www.honolulumagazine.com

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OUR BUILDING HAS A coin-operated laundry system, so our

wash cycles ocially start with a trip to the bank for a roll of 

quarters. I recently took home a little paper pack, and was

delighted to find inside a quarter that was minted in 1940.

It had been handled so much that the perimeter ridge was

flattened and the coin almost

completely smooth. George

Washington’s features are blurry, rather than crisply em-

 bossed, his chin softened, the

waves in his wig long gone.

I took out the next coin,

which read 1943. And the

next, 1941. The whole roll, it

turned out, was a currency

time capsule. I couldn’t pos-

sibly spend these quarters.

I was intrigued, though,

and called First Hawaiian

Bank. Were the coins being 

set aside for some purpose,

perhaps to take out of circula-

tion? No, said Gary Caulfield,

the bank’s vice chairman, IT

and operations group. As long 

as the weight of the coin is

correct, it is still legal tender,

even if it’s hard to read the face

of the coin. As far as the bank

is concerned, it doesn’t matter

what year a coin was minted.

 According to the U.S. De-

partment of the Treasury, the average coin lasts about 30 years.

In Caulfield’s experience, coins are pretty sturdy. “They’re very

rarely damaged, unless, say, a coin was left in the bottom of a

 boat and sat in seawater for a month.” If a coin is too mangled

to use, the bank returns it to the nearest Federal Reserve Bank;in our case, it ’s in San Francisco. The feds send it to the U.S.

Mint, which melts down old coins to create new ones.

More than 20 billion coins pass through Federal Reserve

Banks each year. So how did I get a stash of 70-year-old

quarters? “It was just a coincidence that you got them; some

customer had probably brought them in,” says Caulfield.

I started thinking of all the places these quarters have been,

all the people that have touched them, and began making up

little histories. The 1944 quarter, for example, bought a five-

pound bag of flour for a Wisconsin housewife named Hazel.

She made amazing apple pies and put a wedge of cheddar un-

der the pie while it was still hot—it came to the table all melty.

She’s gone now, but her kids are still talking about those pies,

and I’m still staring at her quarter.

The 1941 quarter was

spent carefully, after the at-

tack on Pearl Harbor; 25 centsthen was worth about $3.80 in

today’s money. A 1948 quarter

 bought two cans of franks and

 beans for a curly-haired folk

singer, who ate them onboard

a train.

In 70 years, these quarters

were flipped thousands of 

times to settle thousands of 

disputes. They slid through

hundreds of vending ma-

chines, and were slipped

under the pillows of dozens of 

6-year-olds who had recently

lost teeth. These quarters

were bet on horses, and

helped buy polio shots and

Elvis records. There’s one in

there that paid for milk shakes

on a first date—a date that led

to a second date, and eventu-

ally marriage and grandkids

for one couple. Wouldn’t they

like to have that quarter, the

one that started it all?

Then a hush must have fallen over these busy coins. They

were put aside and forgotten. Until one day, someone found a

tin filled with old change and thought, “Eh, I should take this

to the bank.”I’m happy they found me, these quarters. I’m not a collec-

tor, but old coins fill me with glee. I love the idea that you’re

having a normal moment, such as buying a co ee, and then you

look down in your hand and realize you’re holding a little piece

of history.

Maybe that’s why it’s called change.

 For more of Wagner’s writing, see her “Guilty Pleasures” blog at

honolulumagazine.com.

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