News
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December 12, 2016
The Money Project is an ongoing collaboration between Visual Capitalist and Texas Precious Metals that seeks to use intuitive visualizations to explore the origins, nature, and use of money.
Humans will do almost anything for gold.
In fact, they will even suspend themselves 2.5 miles into the Earth – braving extreme temperatures, armed thieves, and constant seismic activity – just to mine a 30-inch gold reef.
Welcome to another day at Mponeng, the world’s deepest gold mine.
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December 12, 2016
There’s something about the dollar bill that is beloved by Americans. Despite a variety of efforts to replace it with a dollar coin, most Americans still prefer the dollar bill.
One recent effort to reintroduce a dollar coin into circulation was the Sacagawea dollar. Legislation authorizing a new dollar coin was introduced in Congress in 1997. The law specifically requires the new coin to be “golden in color, have a distinctive edge, [and] have tactile and visual features that make the denomination of the coin readily discernible.” One major reason for these requirements was the perceived design failure of the 1979-1981 Susan B. Anthony dollar coins, which were often considered to be indistinguishable in their appearance from quarters. To maintain compatibility for machines accepting and dispensing Susan B. Anthony dollars, the Sacagawea dollar has nearly identical dimensions and electromagnetic properties, despite its golden color. The Sacagawea dollar is not actually gold; it is mostly copper, with a manganese brass cladding.
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December 05, 2016
It is fitting that President William McKinley is honored on a gold coin. McKinley highlighted his successful 1896 bid for the Presidency with his support of “sound money” – the gold standard, in other words. This stood in contrast to his opponent in that year’s election, William Jennings Bryan, who campaigned fiercely for a “bimetallic” standard of silver and gold. Economic issues largely dominated the 1896 campaign, as the economy was still mired in depression after the Panic of 1893.
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November 28, 2016
The first term of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration saw a flourish of new commemorative half dollars issued. For the most part, the intent of the Mint in issuing these commemorative half dollars was to benefit some organization or cause of national interest. In theory, an association of some sort would purchase the full issue at face value, and in turn sell the commemorative coins on the secondary market at a premium price. The profits generated were intended to benefit the issuing organization and the cause or mission it represented.
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November 21, 2016
The Lincoln Cent is the longest-running coin design in American numismatic history. Its story begins with another US President, Theodore Roosevelt, who was instrumental in its creation.
Roosevelt pushed for the redesign of all US gold coinage, as well as the cent, during his time in office. The Mint actually contracted sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens to redesign the cent, but he had only completed designs for gold coins before his death in 1907. There was a greatly renewed public interest in Abraham Lincoln as 1909, the centennial of his birth, approached. Teddy Roosevelt was a great admirer of Lincoln and sought to honor him on the cent.
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November 18, 2016
*During long holiday breaks, such as Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's, please note that we do "hold" packages from shipping on certain days for security reasons (packages lingering in sort facilities around holidays pose higher security risks). We believe this grace period is in the customer's best interest, and could potentially impact the 3-day shipping window slightly.
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November 14, 2016
Huguenots were French Protestants who were frequently persecuted in majority-Catholic France in the 16th and 17th centuries. After decades of oppression and failed rebellions in the 1620s, many Huguenots fleeing persecution emigrated from Europe to destinations around the world. The ship Nieuw Nederlandt landed in what is now New York in May 1624, carrying Huguenots primarily from Wallonia (now part of Belgium). Famous Huguenots include Peter Minuit, who “purchased” Manhattan Island in 1626, and Huguenot settlers were influential in the early development of the colony.
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November 10, 2016
The Money Project is an ongoing collaboration between Visual Capitalist and Texas Precious Metals that seeks to use intuitive visualizations to explore the origins, nature, and use of money.
The day before the 2016 US Presidential Election, most pollsters and statistical models had pegged Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning at greater than 90%.However, as we noted yesterday, the consensus view is not to be trusted in a post-Brexit world.
Here’s what went wrong:
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November 07, 2016
The Money Project is an ongoing collaboration between Visual Capitalist and Texas Precious Metals that seeks to use intuitive visualizations to explore the origins, nature, and use of money.
With one of the world’s largest economies and a growing financial sector, China continues to rise as a global power.
The country’s currency, the Chinese yuan (officially the Renminbi), is also starting to mature. The most recent evidence of this? The IMF’s decision to include the yuan as a part of its SDR international reserve asset, a basket of major world currencies:
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November 07, 2016
Just as the California Gold Rush resulted in the San Francisco Mint’s creation, the discovery of Nevada silver precipitated the Carson City Mint. In particular, the massive Comstock Lode created immense fortunes for prospectors in Nevada. It was first identified by two veterans of the California Gold Rush in 1857, but a miner named Henry Comstock was one of the first to lay claim to the area. Word of the massive discovery spread quickly and Northern Nevada exploded in population. The town of Virginia City NV, for instance, had over 10,000 residents in 1880 but now has fewer than 1,000 today.