Episode 84: On a Dime

What would you do for a dime? Nowadays, probably not much. In a world of credit cards and tap to pay, dimes are not even used all that much anymore. They also don’t exactly go very far in a time where prices and spending have skyrocketed. In 2022, the National Retail Federation estimated that Americans spent $936.3 billion on Christmas shopping alone. You would need quite a few dimes to reach that amount.

In the early to mid-20^th century, however, the ten-cent coin was both more prevalent and more meaningful. Besides the fact that you could get a lot more with a dime, the coins also carry cultural significance in the memories of some of our interviewees.

In this episode, we’re exploring stories from our collections about dimes, from what they were spent on, to what memories people associate with them. We’ll also hear from Curator of Education at the OSU Museum of Art Daedelus Hoffman about the importance of coins in object-based learning.