Money Museum

Today's Feature: 1966 Special Mint Set - ANA 2009.0032.0133 | Object: # 191 🇺🇸

In the mid-1960s, coin collectors found themselves partly blamed for a national coin shortage. With silver coins disappearing from circulation, the government feared that collecting by date and mintmark was encouraging still more coins to be set aside. Proof and Uncirculated Mint Sets were suspended, and mintmarks disappeared entirely from U.S. coinage from 1965 through 1967. Yet the Mint did not abandon collectors altogether. Instead, it offered a compromise: the Special Mint Set.

Produced only from 1965 through 1967, these sets contained specially prepared versions of each circulating denomination. The coins were struck at the San Francisco Assay Office using polished dies and received a better finish than ordinary circulation strikes, though they fell short of true Proofs. Some SMS coins display the frosted devices and mirrored fields prized by collectors as Cameo and Deep Cameo finishes.

This 1966 set contains a cent, nickel, dime, quarter, and a 40% silver Kennedy half dollar. The Mint produced 2,261,583 sets dated 1966, creating an unusual three-year chapter in which the government simultaneously tried to discourage coin collecting, while making sure collectors still had something special to collect.

💬 Only some SMS coins developed the frosted devices collectors associate with Cameo contrast. Can you spot the light frosting on the reverse?

Explore our (R)evolution in Currency features online today: https://www.money.org/money-museum/america250/

Today's Feature: 1965 Washington Quarter Dollar - ANA 2009.32.133 | Object: # 190 🇺🇸

For generations, Americans could hear silver in their pocket change. That began to change in 1965. Rising demand for silver and dwindling government supplies led Congress to remove the precious metal from dimes and quarters. The new quarter sandwiched a pure copper core between layers of copper-nickel, preserving the familiar silvery appearance while reducing its weight from 6.25 to 5.67 grams. The composition was carefully engineered to ensure the new coins would still work alongside silver coins in vending machines and other coin-operated devices.

The Mint also needed an enormous number of them. With silver coins already being hoarded and a nationwide coin shortage underway, it struck 1,819,717,540 quarters dated 1965—the highest mintage of any Washington quarter to that point. The change proved permanent: although the Kennedy half dollar temporarily retained some silver, America’s dime and quarter had entered their clad era. Look at the edge of almost any quarter in your pocket today, and the exposed core still reveals the solution adopted in 1965.

👂 How’s your hearing? When you hear a quarter hit the counter, can you tell if it’s silver or clad without looking?

Explore our (R)evolution in Currency features online today: https://www.money.org/money-museum/america250/

Today's Feature: 1964 Kennedy Half Dollar Accented Hair -ANA 1984.72.1033 | Object: # 189 🇺🇸

Within weeks of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963, work was underway on a new half dollar honoring him. Chief Engraver Gilroy Roberts adapted Kennedy’s portrait from a presidential medal he designed, while Frank Gasparro adapted the Presidential Seal for the reverse. Jacqueline Kennedy was personally consulted on the design, and production began with extraordinary speed.

Among the earliest proof coins was the variety collectors now call “Accented Hair,” distinguished by heavier hair detail above Kennedy’s ear. It can also be identified by the largely missing lower-left serif on the “I” in LIBERTY. The design was quickly modified, making Accented Hair examples a small fraction of the nearly four million proof Kennedy halves struck that year. The Kennedy half was also the last new U.S. circulating coin introduced in the traditional 90% silver composition. Beginning in 1965, its silver content fell to 40%.

💬 Just 38 days after Kennedy’s assassination, a new half dollar bearing his portrait was authorized. Was that too soon? Should the nation have waited?

Explore our (R)evolution in Currency features online today: https://www.money.org/money-museum/america250/

Today's Feature: 1963 $5000 Federal Reserve Note

Series 1934 - ANA 2023.4.57 | Object: # 188 🇺🇸

One of America’s largest banknotes bears the portrait of a man who spent much of his career wrestling with the power of banks. James Madison opposed the creation of the First Bank of the United States in 1791, arguing that Congress lacked the constitutional authority to establish it. Twenty-five years later, as president, he signed legislation creating the Second Bank of the United States after the financial difficulties of the War of 1812 helped demonstrate the need for a stronger national financial system.

Madison’s fight over the First Bank was part of a much larger argument about money, power, and the Constitution—one that helped define the new nation. Coincidentally, tomorrow’s episode of Worth Its Weight puts that debate under the microphone, so to speak, and explores one of America’s earliest financial battles pitting Madison and Jefferson against Hamilton.

💬 If high-denomination notes returned, who do you think belongs on the $5,000 bill?

Explore our (R)evolution in Currency features online today: https://www.money.org/money-museum/america250/

Today's Feature: 1962 $10,000 Federal Reserve Note
Series 1934 A - ANA 1987.126.139 | Object: # 187 🇺🇸

Imagine settling a $100,000 transaction with just ten pieces of paper. The $10,000 Federal Reserve note was the largest denomination of U.S. currency issued for public circulation, although notes this large were used primarily for transactions between banks. Appropriately, its portrait is Salmon P. Chase, Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury and an important architect of the national banking system created during the Civil War.

The Bureau of Engraving and Printing last produced $10,000 notes in 1945, but existing stocks continued to be issued for more than two decades. By 1969, checks and increasingly efficient bank-transfer systems made high-denomination currency largely unnecessary, and the government discontinued the $500, $1,000, and $10,000 notes. They were never demonetized, however: this $10,000 note remains legal tender for its full face value today—though surviving examples are far more desirable to collectors.

💬 Imagine handing this across the counter to pay for… anything! Who has enough change for a $10,000 bill?

Explore our (R)evolution in Currency features online today: https://www.money.org/money-museum/america250/

Today's Feature: 1960 PF Washington Quarter Dollar - ANA 1985.95.7 | Object: # 185 🇺🇸

By 1960, U.S. proof sets were becoming a collecting phenomenon. The Mint sold 1,691,602 sets, the first time annual production surpassed 1.5 million and an extraordinary increase from the comparatively small quantities produced when proofs returned a decade earlier. Each set contained specially struck examples of the cent, nickel, dime, quarter, and half dollar—including this Washington quarter.

But collectors weren’t necessarily content to leave their new sets untouched. The 1960 Lincoln cent appeared with both Small Date and Large Date varieties, along with much scarcer varieties combining elements of both. Proof sets increasingly offered something to hunt for as well as admire, just as America’s postwar coin-collecting boom was gathering momentum.

💬 Are you a proof-set keeper? Or do you break them up for the individual coins?

Explore our (R)evolution in Currency features online today: https://www.money.org/money-museum/america250/

Update to Our Temporary Closure Notice ‼ Due to the weather forecast this week, our scheduled maintenance has been postponed.

Update to Our Temporary Closure Notice ‼ Due to the weather forecast this week, our scheduled maintenance has been postponed.

Weather permitting the Edward C. Rochette Money Museum will be closed to the public from Wednesday, September 30 through Saturday, October 3 for scheduled maintenance.

While our physical doors are closed, you can still dive into history from home:

📱 Explore Virtual Exhibits: https://bit.ly/4z4O0Bt
🎧 Listen to the "Worth Its Weight" Podcast: https://bit.ly/4dmqHdG

Additionally, the Dwight N. Manley Numismatic Library will be closed September 24-30, 2026. If you have research questions or materials requests, please contact us at (719) 482-9821 or [email protected]. We look forward to working with you to fulfill your numismatic information needs.

Thank you for your understanding!

Today's Feature: 1959 D Lincoln Memorial Cent - ANA 1972.5.3 | Object: # 184 🇺🇸

For the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, the U.S. Mint replaced the familiar wheat ears on the Lincoln cent with a new reverse designed by Assistant Engraver Frank Gasparro. His design featured the Lincoln Memorial (dedicated in 1922), including the tiny figure of Lincoln’s statue visible between its columns. This made the Memorial cent the first widely circulating regular-issue U.S. coin to depict the same person on both sides.

The seated Lincoln was designed by sculptor Daniel Chester French, who also created the famous Minute Man statue in Concord, Massachusetts—the model for the 1925 Lexington-Concord commemorative half dollar. Anticipating intense public interest in the redesigned cent, the Philadelphia and Denver Mints struck enormous quantities in 1959, and collectors saved them heavily. Gasparro’s Memorial reverse proved remarkably durable, remaining on the cent for 50 years, through 2008.

💬 Did you know Lincoln appears twice on this coin? What other hidden details on American coins do you enjoy?

Explore our (R)evolution in Currency features online today: https://www.money.org/money-museum/america250/

Today's Feature: 1958 10 Cent Military Payment Certificate

Series 541, 1st Printing - ANA 2007.1.195 | Object: # 183 🇺🇸

For American service members stationed overseas, dollars weren’t always dollars. Military Payment Certificates (MPCs) were issued for use at designated U.S. military installations to help prevent American currency from flowing into local black markets, destabilizing local currencies, or falling into enemy hands.

The system had an unusual safeguard: periodically, the military could announce a surprise “conversion day,” or C-Day. Authorized personnel exchanged the old series for a new one, after which the previous certificates became worthless. The sudden change made it difficult for unauthorized holders to convert stockpiled MPCs and helped disrupt black-market trading. Old certificates were collected and destroyed—often by burning. Thirteen MPC series circulated between 1946 and 1973. Series 541 was used from May 27, 1958, through May 26, 1961, at American military installations across Europe and Asia.

💬 What other forms of money were designed to be used only be a specific group of people?

Explore our (R)evolution in Currency features online today: https://www.money.org/money-museum/america250/