The usefulness of change — that of pennies, in particular — has been debated for years. Pennies and nickels cost more to produce than their face value — but the U.S. Mint keeps hammering them out nonetheless, along with dimes and quarters, totalling billions of coins each year at a cost of millions of dollars.

On July 25, a new 25-cent piece will enter in circulation: the 2010 Yosemite National Park quarter. This is the third quarter in the “America the Beautiful” series, which honors 56 national parks and other national sites in each state, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories (Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, United States Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands). The U.S. Mint will release five new quarters each year, through 2021.

Why are we telling you all this? Aside from the fact that we like the sound of clinging quarters as we put them in the vending machine, we also recently came across two fascinating videos from WalletPop.com that offer an exclusive behind-the-scenes peek at how coins are produced at the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia. (The U.S. Mint is, of course, not to be confused with Mint.com, the personal finance management website that publishes this blog.)

Above, you can watch five-ton coils of copper and nickel being put into blanket presses that, as one U.S. Mint employee says on camera, are “like giant cookie cutters.” Little disks known as “blanks” are then punched out and, finally, getting stamped to become the coins that you’re used to throwing in the vending machine.

Even more interesting is how coins are actually designed: a process you can learn more about in the video below.  Believe it or not, coin designers actually use the same sculpting software used by the big Hollywood studios. In fact, WalletPop found, that came to a few years ago, after one U.S. Mint employee saw a Shrek DVD with his grandchildren.  To find out more, watch the video below, or at WalletPop.com.

The average wedding these days costs, depending on whom you ask, somewhere between $19,000 and $29,000. Those outrageous numbers, we recently learned from this AOL WalletPop video, you can blame at least in part on Marshall Field’s.

The Chicago department store that is now history (it was acquired by Macy’s, Inc. in 2005) played a big part in the history of weddings in the United States — and how they evolved to become the retail extravaganzas we are accustomed to today.

In 1924, Marshall Field’s became the first department store to launch a bridal registry. It was also the first to start catering to middle-class brides by introducing low-cost knock-offs of high-fashion garments, according to Timothy Long, the costume curator of the Chicago History Museum, where wedding gowns from the 19th century through present are now on exhibit.

Today, bridal registries have become a staple of wedding planning — and, let’s face it, plenty of brides dream of a designer gown that likely carries a price tag higher than anything they ever have or will spend on a garment to be worn just once.

In the 19th century, meanwhile, wedding dresses were little like those we’re used to seeing walk down the aisle today. To begin with, they were not white. To wear a white dress, in fact, would have been considered ostentatious and rude, according to Long: white was not only difficult to produce, but also difficult to keep clean. Back then, wedding dresses were meant to be worn again, and again. In fact, according to WalletPop, the typical cost of a wedding back then would have been around $400.

By the 1940s, the term “white wedding” had already entered our vocabulary. And that meant trouble for those footing the bill.

In an article published in the Saturday Evening Post on May 26, 1946 (a scan of which landed in our inbox thanks to Shane Murray of The Wedding Report), author Horace W. Osborne gives a humorous, if overly detailed account of his daughter’s wedding preparations — and all the costs involved.

“To the distaff side, a ‘white wedding’ merely means that the bride will be married in a white wedding dress,” he writes.  “But to the old man ‘white’ forever afterward will be linked inseparably with the past tense of the verb ‘to bleed.'”  His daughter’s wedding dress cost $191.45, the florist charged $220 and the wedding cake was $45. The total tab wedding tab ran at $2,238.47.

And before you marvel at that inexpensiveness, remember that those numbers are not adjusted for inflation. We used the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation calculator to do just that and arrived at the following, in 2010 dollars:

Dress: $2,320.57

Florist: $2,666.62

Wedding cake: $545.45

…

Total: $27,132.49.

So much for blaming today’s overblown wedding budgets on reality television.

“Why Are Weddings So Expensive? Historians Find The Answer” video provided by WalletPop.com.

As far as holidays go, Flag Day is neither as “official” nor as widely-celebrated as Memorial and Independence Days. Now, those two tend to spark nationwide barbequeing, fireworks and parade bonanzas like no other, right?

That’s not a problem for our nation’s retail industry, though. Every year, as Flag Day rolls around, a plethora of flag-adorned merchandise starts filling out store shelves in preparation for Independence Day a few weeks away. As the folks at WalletPop show in their recent video, these days you can purchase the American flag on pretty much anything, from neckties, candles and T-shirts, to oven mits, mugs, underwear, jackets and even what seems to be over-sized, over-blinged place settings (correct us if we’re wrong… those might simply be gigantic pins).

American families, to be sure, already own a fair bit of patriotic merchandise. According to a 2009 survey by the National Retail Federation, 121 million Americans own an American flag, 89 million have patriotic apparel, 58 million own decorations and 25 million have bumper stickers or car decals. Yet, in June 2009, 14% of consumers planned to purchase additional patriotic merchandise.

Some budget-conscious patriots might question the need to buy yet another flag-adorned tie, scarf or beach bikini. But hey, what’s more patriotic than supporting the American economy with some shopping?

Then again, we wonder, where were most of these trinkets really produced? (We’re putting our money on a country that starts with a “C” and ends in “hina.”)

WalletPop’s Jason Cochran says it best, though: “Maybe it’s easy to question the ethics of slapping the American flag on something just so you can make a quick buck. Then again, that’s capitalism. And isn’t capitalism the American way?”

Happy Flag Day!

Watch the video above, or check it out on WalletPop.com.

photo: lpinseel

Talk about a Greek tragedy. Just when a happy ending was in sight for the economic downturn, a debt crisis that began several months ago  in one of the smallest European Union economies is threatening to spread throughout the continent – and, quite possibly, across the Atlantic.

That should come as no surprise, of course: we all saw the widespread repercussions of the U.S. mortgage meltdown. Banks throughout Europe and Asia, it turned out, had loaded up on our homegrown toxic mortgage assets (otherwise known as MBS, or mortgage-backed securities). Economies worldwide slumped. It took a concerted effort by the world’s leading economies and a massive bailout package in the U.S to contain the downfall.

In a painfully similar manner, the European Union has now announced its own bailout package of unprecedented proportions: nearly $1 trillion in loans available to European countries and the European Central Bank at the ready to purchase Euro-zone debt (that is, bonds issued by European governments and companies).  

While the moves have helped restore confidence in the markets for now, economists and market analysts are already questioning the sustainability of this move, calling it a short-term solution to a long-term problem.

As a consumer, you are probably thinking there’s very little for you to do but sit back and watch the play unfold. That’s not necessarily the case. Just like the Wall Street crisis of 2008 quickly spread to Main Street (or was it the other way around?), few American consumers today are entirely immune to Europe’s troubles.  In fact, you could even use them to your advantage. Here are some suggestions.

1. Euro down: Vacation plans looking up?

Watching the Euro’s steady appreciation has been painful for many travelers, making that European vacation all the more expensive each year or outright unaffordable.  The one sliver of “good” news coming out of the Greek crisis has been that your dollars can, at least temporarily, buy a few more Euros these days. On May 10, 1 Euro was worth $1.29 – 15% lower than the $1.51 you needed six months ago.

“If you are planning a European vacation this summer or even later this year, you have probably been focused on air travel prices and volcano activity,” says Lynn Ballou, a CFP and principal of Ballou Plum Wealth Advisors in Lafayette, Calif. “Instead, why not buy your Euros now?” Already, we are seeing the Euro rebound after Monday’s bailout announcement – this may be a good time to lock in a relatively low price.

2. Jittery stock market: An opportunity to buy?

It’s hard to remain calm when the stock market is racing up and down like an office tower elevator (remember “the crash of 2:45” last week?). We dare think we speak for everyone when we say that we never want to watch our 401(k) turn into a 201(k) again.

But instead of letting panic creep in at the sight of these rapid swings, try to remember the basic principle of investing is “buy low, sell high.” (Too many investors, unfortunately, do just the opposite.) “From an investment standpoint, it might be time to rebalance your portfolio,” Ballou says. Any time a specific asset class is harder hit than others – as is the case now with European stocks (or, broadly speaking, international stocks) – is a good time to consider buying more of that class in order to maintain an asset allocation appropriate for your risk tolerance and investment horizon. Now may be a good time to talk to your financial adviser (if you have one), or take a look at your overall investment picture.

3. Low consumer confidence: Reminder to sustain healthy spending habits

If anything good came out of the market crash of 2008, it was Americans’ long-overdue reassessment of their spending and saving habits. Suddenly, we realized living an unsustainable lifestyle on credit could lead to no good and, collectively at least, started paying off our credit cards and spending less. (See our “Coming Up For Air” infographic for the data behind those trends.)

Ironically, living beyond one’s means is why Europe is in trouble, too. “There is too much debt in the world and right now that problem is poking itself most obviously in the southern European economies,” says Hank Mulvihill, the founder and co-manager of the recently-launched Strategic Investing Long-Short Fund. “Regrettably, we’re going to deal with this for a long time. It’s simply not possible for those debts to be repaid.”

That is likely to translate into lower consumer confidence – both in Europe and on American soil – which is bad news for the economy. But when it comes to individual consumers, it may be a very welcome return to reality: one where we don’t spend money we don’t have and remember to save for a rainy day.