Q I heard the government is issuing “First Spouse” coins. Why not “First Lady”?
A The series of 1/2-ounce, 24-karat coins will debut this year around Mother’s Day with Martha Washington. They will be released along with $1 manganese and brass presidential coins, beginning with Martha’s husband. The current plan to release four presidents and four spouses a year goes through Jack and Jacqueline Kennedy, scheduled for 2015. For presidents who were unmarried while in office — Jefferson, Jackson, Van Buren and Buchanan — the spouse coin will show a depiction of Liberty from a coin of the era. Those who had successive wives during their administrations get two spouses per coin — Letitia and Julia Tyler, and Ellen and Edith Wilson.
Though the spouse coins are stamped $10 on the back, do not plunk one down for a couple of vente lattes. They are, in fact, worth whatever the gold market says they are worth that day — about $329 at the moment. Unlike the $1 presidential coins, they are not intended to be circulated.
The Martha Washington coin won’t be the first to depict a first lady. Dolley Madison was on a commemorative silver dollar sold in 1999.
Rep. Michael Castle (R-Del.) co-sponsored with Rep. Carol Maloney (D-N.Y.) the Presidential Coin Act of 2005. House Bill 902 passed the House and was signed by the president, requiring the coinage.
As to why “spouse” rather than “lady,” a spokesman for Castle said, “Because the series is ongoing, the bill intended to cover any future possibility of the first lady being a man.”
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