The Collapse CCVIII: Full Faith And Credit

 19 December 20XX+1

My Dear Lucilius:

One of the practices Pompeia Paulina and I have been doing on a regular basis is a rotating cycle review of things. We go room by room, storage place by storage place. On the one hand it may seem a bit morbid – after all, we are counting down things like food and other supplies. On the other, it is fairly interesting what memories get randomly triggered by an item.

In this case, it was a silver dollar.

Not just any silver dollar: an 1879 Morgan Silver dollar, likely one of the first silver coins I came into. Its acquisition is burned into my brain.

It happened before the turn of the century, when I was a lowly college student working in my cousin’s convenience store. A kid came in – maybe 18, maybe not, who could tell – with a fistful of coins to buy a pack of cigarettes.

I was used to this: my cousin’s store was on the edge of the “appropriate” part of town, and we had more than our share of experience dealing with ragged bills, piles of pennies and nickels, and grubby food stamps (the first time in my rather innocent middle class life I had seen them). He asked for the cigarettes – likely Camels or Marlboros, that was what everyone smoked – and I started counting out the change.

And there it was: a big, fat, Morgan Silver dollar.

I had the wisdom not to raise a fuss about it, but definitely made sure that it was included in the pile of coins that went into the till. I gave him the cigarettes and shoved back the change. He pocketed it and left; I carefully removed the Silver dollar and replaced it with a paper one from my wallet.

It was in fine condition, a little discolored but not worn, quite likely from a relative’s coin stash that may or may not have known their collectible went up in smoke (as it were). And though I waited, no-one came back looking for it.

This was the first of many silver coins that I acquired over the years of working there and beyond, the results of careful attention paid to change. Over time I acquired a very small hoard, dollars from years past of women with torches walking and quarters and dimes and half dollars with mythical or historical figures on them. Some were worn, some were as good as the day they were coined.

That eventually ran out of course, as I got older and dealt with coins on a less frequent basis and silver coins became a commodity that were sought after; I do not believe I have seen a random silver coin in the last 25 years or more.

I held it there in my hand, feeling the solidity and the weight, watching the light catch the bas relief of the woman’s face. This coin was easily over 100 years old. It was minted, I found out once upon a time, in Philadelphia and was the least valuable of such coins, perhaps fetching 100 times its face value once upon a time. And now it sits here, in a pouch where it is easy to get to if we should need it. As if there was any need for it now.

I cannot eat this coin, Lucilius. I cannot plant it and grow something from it. The bees can make no use of it and the quail cannot nest in it. I could, I suppose, melt it down and make something else out of it. What though? A bullet? We have few werewolves in this part of the world. A piece of art? It is already a piece of art, something far more beautiful in its current form than I could craft myself.

I keep it, as I keep all of my coins, as a hedge against a day where things that are not of direct survival use will have value. If such a day will ever come.

They could be coins from the times of Vikings for all that it matters. Even then they would have no more true “value” than they do now, paperweights and historical markers of an era and economy long gone.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca