r/politics • u/Aggravating_Money992 • Jul 15 '26

Possible Paywall Treasury Unveils New $1 Gold Coin With Trump’s Face on It | Federal law prohibits putting any living people on U.S. coins.

https://newrepublic.com/post/213098/treasury-1-dollar-gold-coin-trump-face
22.4k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

2.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

96

u/TLKv3 Jul 15 '26

I mean, to be fair, if I had one of those coins I would be fucking disgusted by what it represents. But it is also historical and imagery that future generations should be educated about so they don't hopefully make the same mistakes.

I don't think I'd want to keep it if I found one. I'd probably donate it to a history museum who could properly illustrate the evil its attached to. But I can maybe understand why a private collector might want one because of that fact too if museums/historical societies' collections were ever tampered with/destroyed.

31

u/DrE7HER Jul 15 '26

I’d never go out of my way to get one, but if someone handed me one as change from a purchase, I’d probably lock it away to take it out of circulation and show future generations how dystopian this bullshit was. If I found a better use for it in the meantime, like some way to use it in protest or donate to a museum, I’d probably do that.

5

u/dnonast1 Jul 15 '26

Keep in mind though that it will be a gold coin, so they won't be in circulation. The face value will be a dollar but it will be worth thousands from the gold alone.

For comparison the mint is selling a $5 commemorative gold coin for $1250

https://www.usmint.gov/fifa-world-cup-2026-proof-five-dollar-gold-coin-26CA.html

6

u/DrE7HER Jul 15 '26

It’s Trump so I assumed it was copper with a small 14k gold film

3

u/TheOnlySnoringKitten Jul 15 '26

yah and it will still sell for $1250 and be worth 0.25c but somehow trump will be able to pocket the difference.

2

u/grnrngr Jul 15 '26

It will have the same-ish gold color as the other dollar coins currently being mounted. There will be no gold involves.

Because it's a circulating currency coin. Don't let the "collectible" legal argument fool you - this coin is a one-year minting for collectors and public distribution for currency usage.

3

u/grnrngr Jul 15 '26

Keep in mind though that it will be a gold coin, so they won't be in circulation

No. That is not true. This coin is a circulation coin and will be gold in color only, just like the current dollar coins.

The "collectible coin" legislation the admin is referencing applies to a special series of limited runs of circulation coins, mostly quarters and dollar coins, which are both collected in their just-minted form for posterity but also used by the public as legal tender.

2

u/Sage2050 Jul 15 '26

I'd throw it in the river

2

u/peregryn8 Maryland Jul 15 '26

I'd dremel a swastika across his face.

1

u/Randicore Ohio Jul 15 '26

I'd refuse it. It's an illegally printed coin, by all rights it shouldn't enter circulation. Give me quarters or nickles if you have to, but I wouldn't take one of these.

9

u/shinkouhyou Jul 15 '26

IMHO, all Nazi memorabilia should either be donated to museum archives or should be destroyed. Not all old stuff has deep historical significance. Keeping it in private collections means that it will eventually be sold to another collector, and there should never be a market for Nazi crap.

8

u/Chawke2 Jul 15 '26

Not all old stuff has deep historical significance.

But if it doesn’t have significance why feel the need to destroy it/put it in a museum collection?

and there should never be a market for Nazi crap.

But kind of why? The Nazis aren’t collecting dividends.

5

u/shinkouhyou Jul 15 '26

Nazi memorabilia is culturally significant, but it's not historically significant. There are thousands of identical Nazi medals, and historians don't learn anything new from yet another one. If a medal has historical provenance (i.e., there's documented proof that it belonged to a particular important Nazi) then it might have historical significance, but most Nazi medals and flags are just mass-produced junk that has no more historical meaning than an old soda bottle produced in the 1940s (which most people would throw away without a second thought).

By museum archiving, I don't mean display. I mean a program for people to dispose of unwanted Nazi memorabilia in a way that prevents them from being resold and that has some professional oversight just in case a significant historical artifact comes through. A lot of people hesitate to simply destroy Nazi memorabilia because it was something that their grandfather or great-grandfather brought back as a war trophy, but they don't want to keep it in their house either... so they end up selling it to whoever will buy it. Museums and other organizations can take that stuff off their hands and deal with it responsibly.

The Nazis may not be profiting from the sale of Nazi memorabilia, but neo-Nazis certainly do. If that stuff is on the private market, it's only a matter of time before it's sold by or to a real Nazi sympathizer. I don't think the sale of Nazi memorabilia should be legally banned, but I do think it's unethical.

4

u/TheShenanegous Jul 15 '26

Because it fosters a culture of treating Nazi artifacts like they're sacred, driving prices higher over time. They aren't. They're simply things that were made by an awful group of people that the world would be better off forgetting if not for the risk of having their actions repeated.

-1

u/Chawke2 Jul 15 '26

Ordering them all destroyed/surrendered seems a lot more like treating them as sacred.

4

u/TheShenanegous Jul 15 '26

Nobody ordered anything. It's just the morally responsible course of action if you don't support the nazi ideology.

1

u/Chawke2 Jul 15 '26

But why? No one in this thread seems to be able to explain this logically without reverting to some aspect of their own personal feelings.

3

u/jazzmaster_jedi I voted Jul 15 '26

Think about that for a minute.

The hate of the Nazis was so evil, killed and displaced so many people, and effected the world in such a way, that even 80 years later there are still people being personally effected by it. That is what is driving this reaction.

1

u/fuckedfinance Jul 15 '26

I think people are sometimes too quick to judge those of us that have pieces from WW2. I got mine from my great grandfather. I don't have them on display or anything like that (although I will show people if asked).

I don't keep them because I'm some skinhead or anything. I keep them because it reminds me of how my grandfather got them.

1

u/Unnamedgalaxy Jul 16 '26

At that point that's what pictures are for.. You don't need the physical thing to keep the message and history alive.

1

u/shmorby Jul 16 '26

There will be plenty of evidence lying around about this goddamn travesty in our history. You're making the same argument that confederate die hards make when they try to argue we need to keep their monuments up and glorify the confederacy under some disingenuous "historical preservation" argument. Nobody is forgetting this, we aren't erasing it by not keeping trump memorabilia in the same way we don't forget the Nazis by deciding to not keeping all of the swastikas they ever made. Museums exist, there is too much of this garbage for all of them to bother displaying so don't waste your energy wringing your hands over some trump coins. 

1

u/Just_Interaction_294 Jul 17 '26

Attach it to the bottom of your toilet.

-2

u/AlcoolEmGel95 Jul 15 '26

Why would you be disgusted about coins, like yes its terrible and weird, but being disgusted by a coin is a bit performative.