Good Morning.

It's August....but next month is September, and you know what that means.

For weeks now, I've been seeing a highly irritating commercial hawking a "Silver Leaf Commemorative" for the anniversary of 9-11.

Never mind that it's so tacky that if it was a sailboat, we'd be pulling 12 knots with the wind two points off the bow...





Let's go through the breathless copy point by point, shall we?





For starters, there's a disclaimer right at the top of the National Collector's Mint homepage:

"National Collector's Mint, Inc. is an independent, private corporation not affiliated with, endorsed, or licensed by the U.S. government or the U.S. Mint. All tributes to original coins contain the "copy" designation as mandated by federal law."

OK, so these are simply fakes. I'm betting most people aren't going to pick up on that.




Like a Silver Certificate which is payable in silver, this privately minted Coin-Certificate is payable in coin-of-the-realm.

What the hell does that mean? Who's Realm? What coinage? I suspect that means Liberian coin. More on that in a minute.




Stuck in .999 pure silver leaf,

Silver LEAF. Not Silver. I used to build scale models, and we used a little something called Bare-Metal Foil to simulate aluminum aircraft panels or automotive chrome. It's not unlike their "silver leaf" in most respects. A brief search of the internets yields a find of 25 sheets of pure silver leaf for $18.

So what's underneath the leaf?



Most important, it is the first time ever that two separate denominations have been used to add up to its full $20 face value: it displays 9 and 11 on its front...

Well, aren't we lucky we were attacked on September 11th then! Imagine if the attack was on August 19 or something, then we'd have to have a $27 dollar bill!



Authorized by the government of Liberia, it will never be released for circulation

Ah, here's my real issue with this. It's issued by Liberia. Not that that's a problem per se, as they have been associated with the United States since the country was founded by liberated slaves after the civil war. Of course, on the morning of September 11th, the country was being run by the great humanitarian Charles Taylor, which is just the kind of person the sitting "president" loves to have for an ally, but that's a blog entry for another day.

No, the issue is this. This "certificate" is being offered to collectors at the face value, just $20! Remember now, this is issued by Liberia, and bears the federally-mandated seal that marks it as a copy of an American denomination.

At today's exchange rate, one Liberian dollar is worth about 1.5 US cents. Face value for this coin certificate is currently 30.4 US cents. That's a whopping profit margin now, isn't it?



I'll leave you with a brief snippet from wikipedia about this company. You may draw your own conclusions.





As for me, this coming September 11, I will do the same thing I have done every year since then....I'll look intently at the ground and scurry inside the building (I'm afraid of blue skies and low-flying aircraft on that day) and will pause and remember my friend from Scouts....who was in the North Tower that day and lived to tell the tale, but is a different man than he was on September 10th.