@Wortel Besides legal tender coins issued by the U. S. Mint, a lot of private companies put out "commemorative" coins which are overpriced and pretty much worthless as collectibles, since no coin collector wants them, except maybe for laughs. Some of them are ridiculously gimmicky, like a 9/11 commemorative where the Twin Towers pop out like the figures in a pop-out book, to make a kind of sculpture; or one honoring Queen Elizabeth where the portrait is enameled in color. These are advertised on TV with the implication that they'll be worth a ton of money in the future. I don't fall for that, because I learned everything I need to know about collectibles from Beanie Babies.
There's an ad going around now where you can buy a real gold coin for only US$125. To judge from the ads, they look like full-sized gold coins (a one-ounce coin is about the size of our half-dollar); but I did the math and figured out that at that price, they must be one-tenth of an ounce (about 3 grams), and therefore smaller than our smallest coin, the dime. A little googling confirmed that they are, indeed, tiny things. "Because you'll buy anything!"
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@Wortel Besides legal tender coins issued by the U. S. Mint, a lot of private companies put out "commemorative" coins which are overpriced and pretty much worthless as collectibles, since no coin collector wants them, except maybe for laughs. Some of them are ridiculously gimmicky, like a 9/11 commemorative where the Twin Towers pop out like the figures in a pop-out book, to make a kind of sculpture; or one honoring Queen Elizabeth where the portrait is enameled in color. These are advertised on TV with the implication that they'll be worth a ton of money in the future. I don't fall for that, because I learned everything I need to know about collectibles from Beanie Babies.
There's an ad going around now where you can buy a real gold coin for only US$125. To judge from the ads, they look like full-sized gold coins (a one-ounce coin is about the size of our half-dollar); but I did the math and figured out that at that price, they must be one-tenth of an ounce (about 3 grams), and therefore smaller than our smallest coin, the dime. A little googling confirmed that they are, indeed, tiny things. "Because you'll buy anything!"