Small-town, 1920, nickels.

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“Seated” coinage still circulated in the 1920s. The dime is from America’s centennial year, but instead of the celebratory epicenter of (1876) Philadelphia, this is a Carson City coin. Silver was flooding out of the Comstock Lode and other Nevada mines and the metal was cheap. (Which was certainly a part of the reappearance of American silver coins in circulation a year or so before this 1876cc dime was coined.)

The quarter-dollar here is an 1862, from the year that American coinage had stopped circulating (or virtually so) because of the Civil War. The circulating career of this quarter, then, can reasonably be dated to about 1875 or so, rather than its 1862 date.

1862. A very old Civil War veteran, perhaps stopping for a night on his train journey to see a battlefield of his youth—and perhaps to do so for the final time—might plunk this coin on a countertop and then spotting its date, pick it up again for old times’ sake.

Or perhaps almost anyone in 1920 would have picked up this 1862 quarter-dollar as a souvenir. The Great War of 1914-18 had in many minds pushed the Civil War into ancient history. But even if it hadn’t, to the folks walking this Midwestern town in 1920, the street full of motorcars would have made 1862 seem very long ago indeed.

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