Cash Safe from COVID
On March 20, 2020, ABC News reported, “In a world suffering a pandemic, cash is no longer king. A growing number of businesses and individuals worldwide have stopped using bank notes in fear that physical currency, handled by tens of thousands of people over their useful life, could be a vector for the spreading coronavirus.”
The damage was done. Proponents of a cashless society were quick to announce that the world of physical cash, that being coins and bank notes, would soon be over. Many businesses still insist on payment via a credit card or electronic device even now, two years later. Electronic forms of payment listed on stock markets have recently plummeted significantly lower than have the spot price of physical gold or silver, each of which have also been in a slow decline recently.
Just how damaging to the future use of coins and bank notes was the coronavirus pandemic? Brigham Young University (BYU) scientists recently published a study in PLOS ONE that determined the SARS-CoV-2 virus is dead almost as soon as it lands on a bank note. A plasticcomposition credit card, with which some people are more comfortable, proved to be a comfortable home for the same virus for about 48 hours after landing there, according to the same study. Granted, the virus was not infectious when encountered on the bank notes or plastic cards tested in the study.
BYU Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Biology Richard Robison said, “Early in the pandemic, we had this massive outcry for businesses to stop using cash; all these businesses just followed this advice and said okay we are credit card only. I thought, ‘Wait a minute, where are the data to support that?’ And there simply wasn’t any. We decided to see if it was rational or not and turns out it was not.”
Robison continued, “This pandemic has been infamous for people making decisions with no data. We have these people just saying things and massive numbers of organizations just follow it blindly without any data. It turns out in this case, they went precisely the wrong direction.”
As an example, in early 2020, Center for Global Health Science and Society at Georgetown University Professor Julie Fischer told the news reporting entity
CNN, “It’s not impossible that there might be traces of virus on dollar bills but if you wash your hands, it should provide adequate protections, you shouldn’t need anything else.”
At about the same time, bank notes in Europe and Asia were being quarantined for seven to 10 days as what a U.S. Federal Reserve spokesman said was a “precautionary measure.”
The National Bank of Poland posted: “Polish bank notes are subjected to a quarantine” on Twitter about the same time. Hungary announced that bank notes were being withdrawn from circulation and were “resting” for a period before being re-circulated. Iranian merchants were reported demanding payment by debit cards rather than in cash.
It is important to note that the BYU study examined U.S. cents, quarters and $1 Federal Reserve notes circulating on campus or at nearby restaurants. The money was examined within one hour of being obtained. Various money cards were also obtained and examined using the same methodology.
It is also important to note that the bank notes examined were domestic, not foreign. U.S. bank notes are currently composed of a blend of cotton and linen, while some foreign bank notes are composed of polymer plastics. This could suggest that bank notes of such countries as Australia and Switzerland might carry the virus longer, perhaps the same as did the money cards examined in the BYU study.
There have been studies throughout more than a century through which it has been determined repeatedly that, while coins and bank notes do carry carcinogens, bacteria has never been detected in sufficient amounts to argue coins or bank notes are a vehicle through which disease can be spread.
In 1851, Thomas H. Buckler wrote about a smallpox patient in his A History of Epidemic Cholera, As It Appears at the Baltimore City and County Alms-House in the Summer of 1849, “Provisions are wanted for the other patients, and the [bank] notes are sent to market, where they are taken both by town and country people and may pass through 20 different hands in a single day. It would be impossible to conceive any better mode of distributing the poison of a disease.”
Writing about his theory on “virulent matter” on coins, Dr. F.L. Peiro wrote in the Feb. 2, 1877, Chicago Daily Tribune, “Notice, and it will be seen too, that many fine people – ladies in particular – are addicted to the oversight of making their mouths receptacles for this literally ‘filthy lucre.’”
Filthy lucre? It appears cash is still king.
Numismatic Guaranty Company (NGC) has issued a new hand-signed certification label to recognize the contributions to numismatics made by the Honorable Mike Castle, who served nine terms as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Castle was Delaware’s at-large representative in the House from 1993 to 2011, after serving two terms as governor. While in Congress, Castle wrote and/or sponsored the bills that created the 50 state quarter program, the Sacagawea dollar, the Presidential dollar series, the American platinum Eagle, the America the Beautiful quarter program and a number of modern commemoratives – becoming known as “The Coinage Congressman.”
It is estimated that 150 million Americans – half of the country’s population at the time – became casual coin collectors because of the state quarter program, which raised nearly $7 billion in profit for the federal government. Many would become more serious modern coin collectors, which had a transformative effect on the hobby and propelled modern coin collecting into what it is today.
NGC first honored Castle in 2016 with the “Coinage Congressman” label.
The state quarter series started in 1999 with Delaware, the first state admitted into the Union and Castle’s home state. By the time the Delaware quarter was released, however, Castle had already begun to leave his mark on U.S. coinage.
The first numismatic legislation that Castle sponsored was the Commemorative Coin Authorization and Reform Act of 1995, which created the American platinum Eagle bullion coin.
A year later, Castle drafted the legislation that limited the number of new commemorative coin subjects to two per year. This limit, designed to focus the series and build collector interest, continues to shape the modern U.S. commemorative coin series. He also drafted and sponsored the legislation for several new commemoratives, including the 2006 silver dollars that honored Benjamin Franklin, an ancestor of Castle’s.
In his last piece of numismatic legislation, Castle created the America the Beautiful program to begin after the conclusion of the state quarter program. Significantly, this act called for the creation of a 5-ounce silver bullion coin, the largest silver coin ever created by the U.S. Mint.
The new Congressional Series label featuring an image of Castle and his authentic signature will be available through select retailers.