When Rose asks Jack to draw her, she tosses him a dime as a "paying customer". Remember that ten cents was his going rate for the portraits he drew on the Santa Monica boardwalk. A friend swears that the dime was a more recent issue. My son says the same. I thought it was a Mercury head dime from that time period. It doesn't seem likely that the production people would miss something like with all the attention to detail, but I've got to ask all you numismatists out there. Did anyone notice whether the dime Rose used to pay Jack was authentic to 1912?

-- Kathleen Marcaccio (dkosh@msn.com), January 28, 1998

Answers

BITE me if I am wrong; but I have been fighting with internet movie database for over a week now about this. I have seen the movie twice, the coin was a 1902 good-verygood barber dime, probrably minted in phillie,usa; mintage was 21 million. It would be difficult to get so much wear on such a coin[1902-1912] ten years of average circulation would have produced a very fine to extremely fine coin. Some people say it was a roosevelt coin; not issued until 1946, others a mercury; not issued until 1916, four years after the sinking

-- Paul Jon Kuroski (pkuroski@dwave.net), January 29, 1998.