Bob Bestler | Hanging on to collectibles

When my mother died about five years ago, she did not leave many worldly possessions. My own inheritance was meager, but much appreciated.

I took back to McClellanville a rocker upon which I had spent hours in my youth. It is still my all-time favorite chair and it now occupies a spot on our porch.

The only other thing I brought home was a small bag of coins she had been stashing away, for a rainy day, I suppose.

They amounted to 11 Eisenhower silver dollars, 20 Kennedy half-dollars, 6 Susan B. Anthony dollars and 7 Sacagawea dollars _ a grand total of $34. And no I didn’t bother with an inheritance tax. So sue me.

I’ve kept them all and I expect I’ll pass them on someday. They still aren’t worth much as collector’s items, but maybe someday _ and especially so since the United States announced, last month, that it will no longer mint dollar coins.

People simply refused to use the dollar coins and I can attest that it was difficult to use them. The last time I tried to turn a Susan B. Anthony into four quarters (I had mistakenly grabbed the Susan B. to buy a paper, thinking it was a quarter), the girl at the counter looked at me as if I had just stepped off a stage coach. Then she said no.

Ironically, the dollar coins would save taxpayers money in the long run because they last longer than paper dollars. But scuttling them will also save taxpayers money, about $50 million a year.

The dollar coin has had a troubled history. After the Eisenhower dollar, minted between 1971 and 1978, the downsized and offered the Susan B. Anthony in 1079.

From the beginning, people complained that it looked too much like a quarter (see above) and production effectively stopped in 1981. From 2000 to 2008, the government tried a golden tint with the Sacagawea coin, named for the Native American who helped guide Lewis & Clark on their expedition.

In 2005, the government ordered that the dollar coin portray the likeness of presidents, at a rate of four a year. It is that experiment that was terminated last month.

The last president to be on a dollar coin was James Garfield. As Vice President Joe Biden joked in making the announcement, “The call for Chester A. Arthur coins is not there.”

So I’ll hang on to my Susan B.’s and my Sacagaweas and my Kennedys and my Eisenhowers, some of which commemorate the moon landing on the back.

If nothing else, they’ll make a nice history lesson for some future Bestlers.