Monday, September 05, 2005

"O! The joy!"

Danny and I were putting all of our loose change in the big glass jar known as the Bottomless Jar of Misfourtune, and my eye caught a nickel (not "nickle" - Bethany & I now know that a nickle is actually a type of woodpecker!) that looked rather odd...I took a closer look, and realized it was a very recently-released nickel, the first redesign of the nickel since 1938, commissioned to commemorate the bicentennial of the Lewis & Clark expedition. Crazy! I had no idea they were even doing something like that.

The front has a weird, enlarged picture of Jefferson, and the back is a picture of a pine tree and an ocean scene, with the words "Ocean in view! O! The joy!", which is supposedly what Lewis (or was it Clark?) wrote in his journals when they finally caught sight of the Pacific after months of travel. In any case, there were only 50,000 of these suckers printed, so I think I'll hold onto it for now. Might be worth something someday.

Currently Reading:

TITLE: The Handmaid's Tale
AUTHOR: Margaret Atwood


TITLE: V for Vendetta
AUTHOR: Alan Moore & David Lloyd

4 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

so i see that advertisers now comment on our personal blogs..

how contrived: "your blog is creative, keep up the great work"..

its interesting that they are marketing a money market account on your entry about the commemorative nickel.. i wonder how they find us (you're a techy.. do you know?).. maybe a keyword search?

but anyways, i was originally going to comment that it's very Boston (Old New England) to find a Lewis & Clark nickel.. it's your good luck coin!!

<3 Sarah

Anonymous said...

DEAR ARIANA,
APROXIMETLEY 8 MONTHS AGO ON YOUR POST YOU STATED THAT THERE WAS ONLY 50000 LEWIS AND CLARK NICKELS MADE. IS THIS STILL TRUE? THANK YOU VERY MUCH. JOHN

arianna said...

John,
I don't believe that is true, after all. They don't seem nearly as rare as I had once thought, so I believe I was misinformed. I would suggest checking into other sources of information for this -- even doing an online search should yield you some good information.

Thanks for asking!,
Arianna