War bonds have been a thing since literally the beginning of the country.

In this particular case, Britain had spent a few years taking as much hard currency (that is, gold and silver) from America as they could, which left us in a pretty bad state when it came to having something to back our money.

The coin used for today’s cover art was actually a Continental Dollar, which was designed by Ben Franklin. Coin dies at that time were hand-punched, which means that because the dies only had so much lifespan to them, a limited number (a few thousand) could be made but the next run would be slightly different from the previous one. There are records of some coins being misspelled, such as this one. Another die has “currency” misspelled as “currencey”.

The Continental Dollar coin also had a little bit of a rebus pun on it. The word “FUGIO” is Latin for “I fly”, referring to the sun and the sundial. Then underneath the sundial is the English phrase “MIND YOUR BUSINESS”. Put it all together and you get, “Time flies, so mind your business.”

Most coins at that time were made of pewter; only about a hundred survive to this day, even though thousands were made. The prevailing theory for this is that most of them were melted down because of wartime demands for the metal.

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