The case of the long missing trillion-dollar coin – I have, err, had one!

You’ve certainly heard about this, right? It bubbled up in early October and was originally floated in 2011, to bypass any necessity for Congress to raise the country’s borrowing limit – that is from Wikipedia – through the minting of very high value platinum coins. Here’s the rub. I’m pretty sure, almost sure, that I had one of these as a kid. So, it’s really nothing new.

This all has to do with the debt ceiling and laws that limit the Treasury on how much paper money and gold, silver and copper coins it can circulate at once. Enter the platinum coin – there is no limit on the value of platinum coins. I suppose we could also look at palladium but I’m not a metals specialist. Back to this coin.

It was a blustery day in autumn – the type of day with perfectly blue skies and puffy white clouds that all featured the shape of a cartoon character. Leaves skidded across the road as I furiously pedaled my bicycle through the streets of Roscoe delivering the newspaper. You remember those days, right? When a kid delivered the paper?

It was collection day on my route and this week was no different from the hundreds of other times that I had collected for the paper. Some customers left the money under the mat, in between the storm door and entry door, or etc. You get the idea. The cool part was that some customers gave me a tip in addition to a tip at Christmas time. And I’m not talking about advice either – I’m talking about cold, hard cash. That’s gold to a teenager saving up for his first car!

Speaking of gold, let’s return to the coin. One of my customers was, shall we say, a bit of an eccentric. I thought the world of them and enjoyed talking about “the good ol days.” As I picked up the envelope with their payment and dropped the coins into my hand, one of the coins looked unfamiliar to me. It was not your typical quarter or half dollar – some customers paid with half dollars. I loved those! Nope, this was a special coin, and I knew almost immediately that it was going into my “special stash.” The hidden stash.

And there lies the problem. A teenage boy has any number of hidden stashes, but I knew this coin needed something even better. Once I got home, I searched until I found an old metal lock box – perfect! Securely locking the coin inside – wrapped in newspaper of course – so someone couldn’t figure it out by shaking the box – I scurried outside to find the appropriate hiding spot.

And that’s the next problem. Trees and the landscape change over the years – and things don’t look the same when you’re 14 as they do when you are older. The bigger problem – the length of your paces changes too. Was it 15 paces from the big oak tree, or was it 20 paces from the large stone at the corner? And what was my pace at 14 versus now? Oh geez. This is not looking good. It seems that the case of the missing trillion-dollar coin will have to be continued. . .

Category: Mark's Musings