Hey Everybody! This is everything numismatic that is going through my head right now. So, without further ado...1) What is with the US Mint's packing?Have y'all gotten your hands on the new Type 2 Silver Eagles Yet? Well, point aside, the coin is pretty, let us tell you that. However, the packing IS THE DEFINITION OF CHEAP. No more nice little container that contains the felt-lined box. Now, the packing is what they use for the commemorative half dollars- open, felt lined little piece of JUNK, and a cardboard cover. Disappointing. 2) Why does the US Mint make us wait 5 months for a coin?I have asked myself this many times as I wait for our coins to arrive via Snail Mail. The US Mint is very fond of placing out little coins for early (yes, very early) preorder, then making the numismatic faithful wait months. Groan. Stop this cruel practice, and only set your coins to order when you can dish them out right away. 3) Olympics!With the Tokyo Olympics going on right now, I decided to set the overpriced- fat cat Olympics to scale for the lay person (forgive me, but after hours on the couch watching China beat everybody in Ping Pong, this was one of the few things I was thinking about. As on June 2021, the price was set at 26 Billion. Wow! Now imagine each dollar as a penny, which is about 1.52 mm thick, and weighs about 2.5 grams. Now please dig out those calculators. The final height of the stupid pile of penny we hoarded: 24,556.59 Miles, towering over every building in Tokyo, including the SkyTree and Tower, combined. That should place an Olympic-sized dent into the ground. Now, for the weight- at 2.5 grams, and 26 billion of those little suckers, should weigh about 65,000 Metric Tons. Dropped on someone's head would surely be fatal, and punch a nice hole through the Earth. You know what else weighs 65,000 tons? Over 9,000 Elephants. So, Tokyo is spending the equivalent of over 9,000 Elephants, and with no spectators helping to off-set some of those elephants, we can imagine that can get pretty heavy!Thanks Everyone! 

Ah yes, Thanksgiving. Time when we give thanks for our blessings, eat a FEAST in honor of them, plus or minus creating a shopping list for the shopping bonanza ahead. Today, we look at the origins of Thanksgiving and what made it happen. One day, a ship originally headed for Virginia, on November 19th, 1620, landed at Plymouth Rock in present-day Massachusetts. These people (now known as the pilgrims) were escaping religious persecution in their homeland of England, having bounced back- and- forth from Holland and England. After landing at Plymouth Rock (which I have actually seen; not that impressive), they set up camp. The winter was brutal that year. Normally sound people decided to settle in Massachusetts, causing the death of many in the winter. Disease was rampant through the colony. Living sucked. To escape religious shaming to get to cold and freezing temperatures didn't seem like a good idea at the time. The next spring, a Wampanoag named Squanto came along the struggling town and saw the condition. They had allowed them to settle there in the first day due to the fact that they felt that the English would protect the city from rival nations. What appalled them was the farming techniques used by the European's. The techniques that worked in England and Europe didn't work on Cape Cod. The tribe taught the Pilgrim's methods of farming that was better than the European method. One of my favorite methods was using dead fish as fertilizer for plants. Odd, but, it worked really well, and the pilgrims thrived. As a show of thanks the following November, the settlers had a feast to celebrate the harvest. The Wampanoag came over with 90 Indians to see what the ruckus was. Turned out it was a feast, and the settlers had no way to accommodate for them. So, the tribe went hunting, and after that, was three days of celebration.  The Thanksgiving traditions we know today came from the declaration from President Abe Lincoln in 1863, feeling it would unite the nation, which was dealing with a heavy war. What are your favorite Thanksgiving memories? What is your favorite food from the feast? Tell us below. Happy Thanksgiving, fodder.  

Well folks, as you see at the stores, there is a National "Coin Shortage" going on at the moment. To most, this was caused by the guy who ate a bat in China and spread "the virus" to the United States and beyond. While I think this is partially true, I think there is another underlying reason behind the shortage. My culprits are...1...Folks staying at home due to the VirusThis is sort of a tie in to Virus point in the intro, but as we are probably were, we were holed at home. Some states were lucky and came out of lock down quicker. However, we saw many things happen that don't happen, like people picking up new hobbies (I began writing in here in March right before Coronachan hit), to women shaving their whole heads. Based on that thinking, people may of found out about the 50 State Quarter's Series and The America the Beautiful someway or another. Those newbies who find out search pocket change, and keep the ones they need for their folders, causing less and less quarters to reenter circulation. (By the way, I hope these newbies join the ANA.) 2... The Credit Card Industry.Here is were I hit my first hoax. I think a reason for the ongoing coin shortage is that the credit card industry concocted it. My idea for this theory- they told everyone about the coin shortage to hook people on credit cards. Which leads me to......3...The Government Faked it.It is know by both Democrats and Republicans that the sons of J. Edgar Hoover and the CIA in Langley like to spy on you. To get even deeper into the private search and shopping habits of people (the CIA knows what coins we buy) they told everyone there was a coin shortage. Then, they hope that you would hook onto a credit card. Which would allow the FBI to track you.Got anymore nutty theories? This is not really a numismatic post, but it involves coins and is a goopy, fun forum. See you later!