Ripley's Believe It or Not by Ripley’s Believe It or Not! for May 19, 2015

What is a copper birch cent worth? As in if a dime is ten cents, what is the copper birch cent?

When minted, it was worth one cent, otherwise now called a penny, or one hundredth of a dollar. Less then a dozen minted then I believe, & now extremely rare & worth millions of dollars depending on condition. You can Google why it was called a “birch” penny—maybe named after the designer?

I just looked it up. Only seven made, & designed by Robert Birch, mainly as a prototype for future US coins. The US did not have any official US government coins minted previous to them. They were the first.

Trivia: the first US mint was built in 1792, in Philadelphia, the same year those first coins were minted, but I am not sure if they were actually made at the Mint building. The Philadelphia Mint is now in its fourth building. The first burned down, & the others outgrew the space needed. The mint also has made coins for other countries. I believe that Paul Revere had a hand in some of the first US coins produced, but not sure.

When I was 10 years old I found a 1943 copper penny. I kept it in my collection until I went into the army in 1960. I really didn’t know what it was worth, just knew it was different from regular 1943 steel pennies. In rural Arkansas in the 40s and 50s, I had no knowledge of coin values and no way of finding out.

While I was in the Army my brother spent my penny collection. All of them. He bought a bow and some arrows.I haven’t had the heart to collect coins since.

Ok, what about the Land Rover’s condenser? Air conditioner condenser? Exactly what did he fix? And how is this relevent, curious, or even noteworthy? What is his title again, Automobile Association Patrolman? What exactly does he do? Can we call him Sir Spud?

I once fixed a Ford with some bailing wire.

Seriously, it seems as if the fact collectors and checkers are easily amazed and not very thorough. I have seen several things recently that a little research showed the event or situation to be something quite different to what was shown in the strip.

And 50 years ago I fixed my own leaking gas tank (cracked going over a rock) with a bar of soap. (Gas doesn’t dissolve it.)

In the UK, A radiator is called a condenser, a trunk is a boot, a hood is a bonnet, a fender is called a wing.Don’t you know the Queen’s English?

I think the current U.S. coins look cheap. They’re not stamped with much force.

A U.S. penny, depicting Lady Liberty and dated 1792, which, according to CNN, recently sold for nearly $1.2 million, is embossed not with “In God We Trust”—that didn’t appear on U.S. coins till 1864—but with “Liberty Parent of Science & Industry.”

This is yet another indication of how secular and progress-oriented the Founders were—and of the fact that the United States is not and never was a Christian nation."… Craig Biddle, author of the Objective Standard.

By the way, an excellent image of the front and back of the coin can be seen here: https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/2015/03/a-penny-for-your-thoughts-liberty-parent-of-science-industry/

About the Land Rover and the potato,what did Mario do, stick it up the tail pipe? :)

Don’t they know that since British postal codes have SIX characters and use numbers AND LETTERS, it is nothing special to have your own postal code? I do believe when I lived in Scotland for 2 years (I’m American) my building by the castle had its own postal code…if you put it in a search or order form, it right away knew your address.

Rosewood Manor’s zipcode is SW1E 5BH, so it is 7 digits!

7 character postal codes give the possibility of 78,364,164,096 locations. 10 postal codes for every PERSON in the world.

Of course I can’t remember if like the first character has some significance, but still….. 6 digits is over 2 billion addresses.

I’m envious! I love pre-1800 American coins. By comparison to an early work by an obsure artist, it seems a fair price.