Scrooge paid too much for the Kachoonga diamond mine.

lgiver@postoffice.pacbell.net lgiver at postoffice.pacbell.net
Wed Sep 25 06:08:29 CEST 2002


I'm finally looking at some of the many details in Don Rosa's
Life & Times of Scrooge, part 11, which covers the
years 1909 to 1930.  In Scrooge's first trip after completion of
his money bin, he takes his sisters up the Congo and Mumbo
Jumbo rivers to buy the Kachoonga diamond mine from
Chief Boo-boo of the Qwak Qwak tribe.  He gives the
chief  a coin with "a miniature portrait of the chief of my
village" (page 5, panel 5).  Chief Boo-boo looks it over, and
reads: "ooo---chief 'quarter-dollar'!  Most impressive".
Scrooge gave him an American quarter-dollar with an
American president's portrait on it?  
   Scrooge couldn't do that, because George Washington
wasn't on the quarter-dollar until 1932.  No president was
on any American coin until 1909, unlike today, when
presidents are on all fractional-dollar coins.  Lincoln (Disney's
favorite president, although others may disagree) was
the first on a coin, the penny, in 1909, followed by
Washington on the quarter in 1932, Jefferson on the
5-cent coin in 1938, Franklin D. Rosevelt on the 10-cent
coin in 1946, and Kennedy on the half-dollar in 1964, and
they're all still there.
    So in 1909 or 1910, the only coin Scrooge could have featuring
"the chief of my village" would have been the Lincoln penny!
Scrooge should have given chief Boo-Boo a brand-new shiny
copper penny, featuring 'chief one-cent'.   The 1909 pennies from
the San Francisco (not Sacramento) mint with the tiny letters
V.D.B. under the portrait (sort of like Rosa's d.u.c.k.) are in big
demand by those dreaded coin collectors, so if chief Boo-Boo
had one of those in perfect condition, it would be worth almost
as much as an Uncle Scrooge #1 comic book in top condition!
   ------Larry Giver.




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