Tomahawk Nickels

Last night I had this really strange dream about "tomahawk nickels." These were nickels which had been minted in the United States for only a few years, way back when, and in the dream I was inspecting some of these tomahawk nickels.

And the thing is, they weren't shaped like coins. They were shaped like little metal tomahawks.

In fact, they were three-dimensional: think of a handle and an axehead and a feather, arranged as if along three adjacent edges of a pyramid. Or in other words, the feather stuck out to the left of the tomahawk. I imagine a pocket full of tomahawk nickels would be like a pocket full of jacks.

On one side of the axehead was the date. On the other side of the axehead was "US 5c."

Like I say, these tomahawk nickels weren't minted for long. Most people just found it too inconvenient to use a "coin" that wasn't shaped like a coin, and in fact was 3D instead of flat. Though in the dream I was remarking to my brother, "Remember when we were kids, and every now and then you'd receive a tomahawk nickel in change at the grocery store?"