Today, while vacuuming my couch, I was pleasantly surprised to yank out the cushions and be met with an explosion of change. Since the advent of the toonie and loonie, even a bit of change can equal a lot of money, so when I saw several toonies and the bunch, I knew I had a valuable little surprise. Imagine my surprise though, when I bend down to retrieve my modest fortune, and spot a piece of Turkish lira among my Canadian currency.
I've never been to Turkey and I'm pretty sure my couch hasn't either. So how the hell did Turkish coinage end up in my cushions? Here's another puzzler: why, when I turned the coin over, was the stoic profile of Queen Elizabeth II on the other side?
Well, because it was actually a Canadian quarter. But not the regular old quarter that most of us know. Not the deer on one side and the Queen on the other. No, this was some star-laden monstrosity in the deer's place.
I was irked for two reasons: first, I thought I had some Turkish lira on my hands and, as any idiot knows, one Turkish New Lira is worth 83.47 cents Canadian, so I thought I had more than 25 cents.
Second, because those twits at the Royal Canadian Mint can't stop churning out gimmicky new designs every five minutes, to the extent that I didn't even know I had Canadian money in my hand.
Most of us are all too familiar with the Mint's clever little ideas. Back in 1995, The Mint threw the Toonie at us before ironing out that little design flaw that let you pop out the center piece. In 2004, we got the world's first coloured coin, that ridiculous quarter bearing a poppy that looks like it was coloured in with some kid using a felt-tip pen. At least they managed to stay inside the lines, but we all learned that the colours fade off pretty fast and the Mint was so stoked to show off its colouring ability that it vomited the coins out there before learning how to do it right.
I've considered the Mint fairly ridiculous for a while now. Last year, it spat out a rare three-dollar coin. Gold, square, gimmicky and pointless. Last week, it produced a 100-kilogram gold coin for no particular reason. And since 2000 or so, it has created roughly 700 billion new designs for quarters (estimates may vary). There were quarters for ever province, native tribes, veterans, farmers, breast cancer, the list goes on.
I can appreciate variety and I can also admit that some of the designs are cool. But there's such a thing as overkill. After finding my Canadian Lira, I took a look through my pile of change I stash away for laundry and found out of 140 quarters, nearly 25 were some weird-ass design with very few doubles among them. That seems a bit excessive.
Aside from the sheer gimmicky stupidity of it all, there are reasons why I'm sick of the flood of exciting new designs.
First, it will erode away a cherished method of choice. Some day, it won't be "Heads or tails?" anymore, but "Heads or… some native design… an owl? No wait, Gitche Manitou?"
Or, if you've got the newest Veterans coin, it's "Heads or… heads?" Then you're screwed!
The other problem will be familiar to those who read my kinda-recent gripe about Toronto's St. Patrick's Day Parade: when you start commemorating everything, the really important things lose their value. As time goes on, more and more things become Collector's Items, Special Editions and so on. Every one who dies is termed a hero. When everything is special, then nothing is.
All this coin lunacy has got to stop.
Right after they put me on a coin. God knows I deserve it.
