Why Lincoln faces right on the penny

Dear Matthew Alice: Of all contemporary U.S. coins, it seems rather curious that the Lincoln penny profile is the only one facing right. Does this have any political significance? Is Lincoln the only one representing conservative, reactionary views, while the others are looked upon as liberals? Jefferson displays his left cheek on the nickels of recent mintage, while the old buffalo nickel has an Indian on it showing his right side. Dollars consistently show a left profile. When a new pattern is designed for a U.S. coin, who decides on the direction the famous person depicted will face? — M.H. Larson, San Diego

Dear Matthew Alice: In old movies and cartoons, one occasionally sees the characters biting coins. Why? Are they checking to see if it's gold? If so, wouldn’t a coin subjected to this after each transaction have a very short circulation life? — Numismatically Stumped, Normal Heights

Mr. Larson seems to have spent a lot of time trying to impose order and logic on something that’s basically haphazard. The situation has everything to do with art and virtually nothing to do with politics, according to the curator of the museum of the American Numismatic Association in Colorado Springs.

The Lincoln penny, the oldest design still in circulation, dates from 1909. (The rest, Kennedy excepted, have been the same since the ’30s and ’40s.) Abe, by the way, was the first real person to be depicted on an American coin. He replaced a fake Indian. The designer modified the profile of a Roman statue and stuck a feathered headdress on him and nobody seemed the wiser. The Indian on the buffalo nickel, though, is a composite of two authentic Indians, friends of the coin’s designer. As for Abe, the reason he’s facing right and not left was lost with the engraver who designed it. I guess nobody thought to ask him why.

There’s an old half-dollar, the Walking Liberty, which shows the lady wearing some filmy Victoria’s Secret-type outfit and carrying an armload of weeds, hay...hard to tell what. Anyway, she’s trucking along from right to left, and we do have an explanation for that. She’s heading for the rising sun that peeks over the horizon on the left, the “east” quadrant of the coin, I guess.

As for who makes these decisions, the Department of the Treasury handles the designing, the artist is free to face the subject in any direction he or she chooses, and Congress gives final approval. The museum isn’t aware of any political considerations affecting who’s facing in which direction, but comes the day we have the Newt nickel, it may become an issue. The ANA says the British used to reverse the profiles on their coins when a new monarch took the throne. If the defunct royal was depicted nose-left, the fresh, new one would be nose-right.

As for coin biting, that cliche comes from actual practice, before there was a U.S. Mint, when private mints produced our coinage state by state. In those days, a $20 gold piece, for instance, was made of $20 worth of pure gold. Coin makers could up their profits if they used some base metal coated with gold and passed it off as the real thing. It was the wise shopper who bit into his change. You’d leave tooth marks in pure gold. I suppose enough wary consumers, would dent up the coin pretty well after a while. But so would normal wear and tear. Which would explain why a coin-collecting Texan recently resorted to the time-honored bite-it test when he found a suspiciously shiny, high-relief $20 gold piece in a box of old coins. As it turned out, the money did more damage to his teeth than vice versa, but the gold-coated fake was still worth $50,000.

And while we’re on the subject, here’s an addendum to a recent answer about the origin and meaning of all that felt pen marking on paper currency. Aside from the markings applied in some still-mysterious bill-counting process by the Federal Reserve, bars and restaurants will often mark singles and fives that are used to chum the jukebox waters each night. Apparently we’re more likely to feed the juke if it’s already spinning out tunes, so the house uses marked bills to keep the music going. That way, when they count the take, they can tell which bills are theirs, which are ours. That also explains the nail polish-covered quarters that used to circulate in the days when you could play a tune for a quarter.