Oct 23, 2012 3 min read

At first glance, the sign seemed to be good for a laugh.”This is a 50¢ piece,” it read, with an arrow pointing to a cutout copy of said coin. “Do not use in vending machines.”I’d chuckled a bit earlier that same day when a clerk at the post office asked if I wouldn’t mind taking a dollar coin for change.”Sure,” I said, expecting Sacagawea or perhaps an old Eisenhower. Instead, he handed me Rutherford B. Hayes.Yes, the 19th U.S. president – the guy who lost the popular and electoral vote, but went to the White House, anyway – is on money. He’s part of the Presidential Dollar series that the U.S. Treasury Department has been minting since 2007.Oops, missed that one.Most of us are used to handling pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters and bills ranging from $5 to $20. The high rollers see the occasional $50 or $100.But the federal government issues plenty of other stuff that qualifies as legal tender, even if you can’t use them in vending machines.The half dollar, for example, has been minted since 1794 and appears to have been a popular coin until around 1964. That’s when John F. Kennedy version appeared, and collectors started taking them out of circulation, perhaps because they were fans of the late president but more likely because of the relatively high silver content.Today, the half dollar is minted only for collectors, and if you do see one, it most likely will be 2001 or earlier.Another American monetary curiosity is the $2 bill, featuring Thomas Jefferson, which still is printed in limited amounts. It actually ceased production in 1966, but the Treasury Department revived it 10 years later, figuring inflation would increase the demand for something larger than the $1.That wasn’t exactly the case, of course. Neither was the supposition three years later that people would want to see Susan B. Anthony on a dollar coin.Decades earlier, the government ceased printing currency with values of more than $100. Good luck ever coming across one of these: William McKinley, $500; Grover Cleveland, $1,000; James Madison, $5,000; Salmon Portland Chase, $10,000. Then there was Woodrow Wilson at $100,000, but that never made it into circulation.By the way, Chase was Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of the treasury and later served as chief justice of the Supreme Court. There’s your trivia answer for the day.As far as the Presidential Dollar series, the intent is to mint one for each of those guys, with two, of course, for Cleveland and his nonconsecutive terms. The Treasury Department, though, has stopped producing them for general circulation, so I’ll be surprised if I come across too many more.Besides, you can’t use those in vending machines, either. Harry Funk can be reached at hfunk1213@gmail.com.