Bone In The Fan

National Collectors Mint looking for idiots

I was going to make this part of a list of horrible potential Internet purchases, but I’ve seen the commercial one too many times now, so it rates its own post. Besides, it’s not just hawked on the Internet, meaning there are enough assholes willing to purchase it that it’s actually worth buying TV time.  I’m speaking of course of the “9/11 Coin Certificate: World Trade Center Commemorative” thing you can buy here.

Is it a 9? An 11? No! Add it up to get $20 big Liberian Dollars

Now normally I’d avoid posting a link - but no one that reads this will buy that, and really, you need to go watch the commercial which they have running on the homepage. Because see, it explains all the VALUE this bad boy has.  Including:

• It’s much LARGER than US Currency. This makes it better, though its mileage will suffer.
• The 9 and 11 add up to the value of the “coin certificate.”  Never been done before!
• It has the phrase “we will never forget” on it.  Which I’m sure is true, because I’d never be able to forget making and selling these horrible pieces of shit either.
• It comes with a certificate of authenticity, which confirms its status as “non-circulating Liberian Legal Tender Currency.” So you KNOW you bought something, and that something isn’t money, but it is a real something of some kind.
• It’s exchangeable for coin of the realm! So if you find yourself in Liberia and you only have this huge silver-colored thing in your pocket, you can go….somewhere, one assumes…. and exchange it for 20 Liberian dollars with which you can make a phone call to someone that could wire you some real money. As long as the phone call costs less than 37 US cents, which is what twenty Liberian dollars equates to. This may be why the front says “In Memory” right above “Twenty Dollars.”
• The back has “a stunning design of the new freedom tower skyline, in a silvery tribute to all who were lost on that tragic day.”

Oops - hang on there - I just threw up in my mouth a little.  OK - let me finish.

• The original issue price was supposed to be $39, but you can actually get it for only $20! Sadly, they are limiting purchases to only five per caller, so that sucks. Unless you call back.

The one bright side is that this might provide at least one positive way to leverage the whole expanded-governmental-powers-and-restricted-civil-rights thing going on now: perhaps the government will seize the names and addresses of all the people who bought one (or five) of these things, round them up and toss them in Gitmo, then waterboard them to death, removing them from the gene pool.  You know, because they’re suspected of terrorism or something.

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