CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS: HIS DECLINE IN NUMISMATICS

When in the early 1990s the United States was getting ready to commemorate the quincentennial of Christopher Columbus first landing on the Caribbean island of Guanahani, a bill was proposed that would eliminate the cent and the half-dollar and create a new small dollar coin bearing a portrait of the discoverer (Wilcox, 1006-7).

Nothing ever came of this, though in November 1991 the United States Mint announced its plan for a “500 Years of Discovery Medal” for the U.S. Christopher Columbus Quincentenary Jubilee Commission. A year later, the Mint released a half-dollar commemorative coin. Designed by T. James Ferrell, the coin's obverse shows Columbus at landfall; in the background is the Santa Maria and a smaller ship with the crew disembarking. The coin's reverse shows Columbus' flotilla of three ships.

When in the early 1990s the United States was getting ready to commemorate the quincentennial of Christopher Columbus first landing on the Caribbean island of Guanahani, a bill was proposed that would eliminate the cent and the half-dollar and create a new small dollar coin bearing a portrait of the discoverer (Wilcox, 1006-7).

Nothing ever came of this, though in November 1991 the United States Mint announced its plan for a “500 Years of Discovery Medal” for the U.S. Christopher Columbus Quincentenary Jubilee Commission. A year later, the Mint released a half-dollar commemorative coin. Designed by T. James Ferrell, the coin's obverse shows Columbus at landfall; in the background is the Santa Maria and a smaller ship with the crew disembarking. The coin's reverse shows Columbus' flotilla of three ships.

Emitting the coins at best was a half-hearted endeavor, done in order not to fall behind international practice (Spain, Portugal, and Italy–as well as the Bahamas, Colombia, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Cuba, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, and other Latin American countries already had produced their commemoratives).

Worse, sales figures were more than modest: of the six million pieces minted, only some 600,000 were sold to the public. Most of the coins were later melted down. The economic failure of the coin shows that in the United States there was not then much to write home about Columbus' numismatic presence, and the 1992 commemorative did little to improve the situation.

The quincentennial of Columbus' death, in 2005, did not occasion any numismatic activity on the part of the Mint, and the six-hundredth anniversary of Columbus' birth, presumably in 1451, seems too far in the future to make any predictions.

To read the complete article, see:
Christopher Columbus: His Decline in Numismatics and the Nation's Collective Memory (https://coinweek.com/coins/commemoratives-coin-guide/christopher-columbus-his-decline-in-numismatics-and-the-nations-collective-memory/)

In October 1792, the United States of America was still a new country, not even a decade old, fresh from a complete government overhaul just four years earlier. With only one federal election by that point, and one president, it was a nation long on ambition, but short on history. There were heroes, of course, drawn from the ranks of those who had struggled for independence from Great Britain. But Revolutionary heroes were growing politicized by 1792, taking sides in an emerging party system. What figure could rise above partisan squabbles to unite Americans in patriotic spirit? A New York merchant with a penchant for history and a budding fraternal organization had an answer: Christopher Columbus.

A detail from an illustration of a Tammany Society medal. Columbus and Tammany join hands in friendship, though they lived nearly two centuries apart. Above them is the motto “Where Liberty Dwells, there is my Country.” From the catalogue of the numismatic collections of W. W. C. Wilson (New York: Anderson Galleries, 1925)

To read the complete article, see:
The monument that created Columbus (https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/created-columbus)

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