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Gold coins I made in photoshop

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vita

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I had always wondered what kind of coin i would make if I actually lived in my own secret atlantis as in Atlas shrugged, so I got the idea and put this together. I understand the lighting and shadows are off and that the gold colors dont match that well, but this is just a rough outline of my idea. Let me know what you think.

post-8019-0-13367700-1292438744_thumb.jp

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Looks pretty neat, what's the owl for, if you don't mind me asking? Also, did you consider making "self esteem" right side up? I think it would serve better purpose if you could read all three of the words from the same angle, without turning the coin around. A kick-A design in my book, all around.

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Looks pretty neat, what's the owl for, if you don't mind me asking?

I wanted an animal that represented wisdom and intelligence so i picked the owl, I did really know what else to put on there, i guess i could have put something like "A-A" idk what would you like to see on there?

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I wanted an animal that represented wisdom and intelligence so i picked the owl, I did really know what else to put on there, i guess i could have put something like "A-A" idk what would you like to see on there?

An owl's just fine with me (it's your coin anyway), I just wanted to know why you chose it. If it had been my coin, I'd have put a man on there, either a profile or someone striking a heroic pose or something like that. But I'm human-centric B)

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I like this coin a lot actually. I'm not big on the whole Canadian/Political Correctness use nature instead of history approach to coinage. However, the owl in this case is not meant in any natural sense, but in a symbolic sense. And yet, it is natural, and therefore representative of life and also reality.

The front (nature) represents a foundation (reality), the back (symbol) represents the temple if you will. The philsophy, by the light of man's mind, constructs upon reality a ...

Well, that's the purpose of money. It exists to facilitate whatever comes next...

As for the owl symbol, I think I'd like to live in a world without faces on coins. I'm a patriot and all, but recent shenanigans with our awful awful government, and the financial mess, and so forth, does make me long for a society whose common property is... ideas... rather than things like powers, or people, or General Motors.

So, I'd like to think some more about the choice of the owl. The Eagle is a fine symbol of government, but not so much currency. Wisdom is noble, but we have the symbol on the back. A national bird represents a nation, whereas the currency applies to the market and the minds therein.

What in nature is symbolic of a market of actors and minds coming together to produce value? The sun is a source of value, the primary source of value. But it does not represent the exchange; it represents value as such, not produced value. There's the human hand, but that represents grabbing, taking, beating, force. The eye, but that's covered by the flame of the torch, and often represents God. Pyramids represent the establishment lording over, and aren't quite natural.

Okay, the owl's fine.

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From Wikipedia:

The
Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters
(Spanish:El sueño de la razón produce monstruos') is an etching made by the Spanish painter and printmaker Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes. Etched between 1797–1799,[1] it is plate 43 of the 80 etchings comprising the Los Caprichos series and was initially intended to be the frontispiece.[2]

It consists of a self-portrait of the artist with his head on a table, as owls and bats surround him, assailing him as he buries his head into his arms.[3] Seemingly poised to attack the artist are owls (symbols of folly) and bats (symbols of ignorance).

It would seem that owls, as a symbol of wisdom, is a rather recent phenomena.

A bust of Ayn Rand would be fitting.

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Or maybe a handshake could be the symbol. It's the universal symbol for willing trade, the value-for-value idea, all that good stuff. Just like trading the gold coin itself, a handshake is what two productive adults do when they trust each other's ability to provide the value agreed upon by the two of them.

Francisco D'Anconia said that the money in your wallet is "your statement of hope that there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money". I think a handshake is a statement of exactly the same thing: that your trading partner will not default. So I think it's fitting that it goes on the coin.

To clarify, I mean a close-up picture like this:

handshake1.jpg

Edited by softwareNerd
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