Junk money for junk food

One of the more interesting items from last week's holiday visits with friends and family, aside from the increasing number of unsolicited complaints about the rising price of nearly everything (people are starting to catch on), was the revelation that snack machines at hotels don't take quarters with silver in them - at least not the one that we wanted something from on Saturday morning.

After a short walk down the hall to get something to eat prior to meeting up with friends for a hike and a late breakfast, it came as a great surprise to my wife that the machine kept spitting out the "heavy" quarter with a slightly different color and a very different sound.

It was a 1964 quarter - the last year before the U.S. Mint switched from a 90 percent silver - 10 percent copper blend to the current 92 percent copper - 8 percent nickel concoction that, according to the fine Coinflation website, resulted in a weight loss of almost ten percent.

Of course the value of the pre-1965 quarter relative to the more recent ones is the most intriguing part.

The coin that the machine refused to take, as just a fraction of the purchase price for something that we ended up not eating anyway, can be exchanged at a friendly coin shop today for about ten times its face value - $2.50 - which would have purchased maybe two junk food items that we wouldn't have eaten.

Naturally, you'd have to figure in the cost of driving to the coin shop and, like at least one mining company, you might find that the effort would be "uneconomical" due to other prices that are rising faster than precious metals.