There is at least one coin dated to the day: Some rare varieties of a C. Bechtler $5 have the date "August 1, 1834" on it.

Christian Bechtler was a coiner in Rutherford, NC. The US Government had announced that new gold coins would bear the date "August 1, 1834" to distinguish new tenor coins from the old. Instead the government coined a new design and scrapped the oddball date idea. Christian Bechtler put the date on his new dies and used them for a time.

This is an illustration of KM 1139.1 It was struck at a press at the Istanbul mint money museum. It has the date, month in Turkish, and year. It was used for 8 months in 2002.

There is a second variety used during the whole of 2003, where the reverse die has the date, month in both Turkish and English, and the year.

The denomination was 1 million Lira, in their old system which was replaced in 2005. 11.87g, Brass center in Copper-Nickel ring. 32.1mm

Earlier this century, Turkey allowed visitors to the mint to strike coins with the date they visited. You can see this in an image posted at dealer Bob Reis’ website (www.anythinganywhere.com). He offers a ringed bimetallic 1 million lira coin. Clearly these were issued as commemoratives, aimed at visitors and meant to be souvenirs. But you can’t get much more specific than the actual day of striking!

TURKEY, REPUBLIC, bimetallic 1 million lira K1139.2? 2004 January 08, Unc $8.50

Struck by a coin operated machine at the mint museum and bearing the date of issue. Supposedly there was a mintage of 500 maximum per day. Day dated coins have been made at other times and in other places, but the practice is rare. In 2005 Turkey dumped the inflated lira and issued a new one tied to the USA dollar.

I should, of course, also have mentioned last week, when writing about months on coins, the long series of Athenian Tetradrachms stretching over a century from very early in the 2nd cent BC to sometime in the first half of the 1st cent BC. One of the defining feature of the series is that the reverse depicts the names of the city magistrates, flanking an owl, and a letter of the Greek alphabet on an amphora below.

The sequence of the magistrates is known from other sources, although various scholars have argued over the base date from which the sequence starts. Margaret Thompson, in her "New Style Silver Coinage of Athens", which is regarded as the standard work, proposes a start date of 196 BC.

The letter on the amphora indicates the month within the year of office of the magistrates stated; the position of the letter in the Greek alphabet indicates the number of the month in the year. On the example shown, the letter is an alpha, hence month one of the magisterial year.

Greek months were lunar, and should therefore have been arranged along the lines stated last week; namely, twelve ordinary {12-month} and seven leap {13-month} years spread evenly over every nineteen years. Would-be magistrates no doubt coveted a leap year for their period of office, as it would give them another 29-30 days of power, and there are irregularities in the sequence of years containing intercalary coins {month 13} which imply that personal political ambition was occasionally allowed to take preference over the correct workings of the calendar; for example, by declaring a second leap year after one had just finished. This, if allowed to continue for even a very short time, rapidly throws the seasons out of sync.

The magic letter for one of these embolismic coins, indicating month 13, is N.