Here's a nice, low-stakes problem: the Royal Mint's HG Wells coin is riddled with errors.
In a world where I’m still starting every email with “I hope you’re well…ish…I mean obviously I hope you’re extremely well but I recognize that’s fairly unlikely at the moment ahahah,” it’s nice to be reminded that there are still low-stakes disputes playing out all over the world. For example: the Royal Mint totally bungled its HG Wells commemorative coin, and it did not escape the notice of the author’s fans!
Wells-heads pointed out that the (coin-sized) coin features two errors: the walking machine from The War of the Worlds, which Wells describes as a “monstrous tripod,” has four legs, and the Invisible Man’s hat is rendered as a top hat, though the hat in the story is “wide-brimmed.”
This isn’t the first time that the Royal Mint has failed to check its work on commemorative tender: just last year, a £10 note misattributed a quote from Pride and Prejudice. Listen, ordinarily my thoughts on this kind of thing would run a bit more toward the “cool it, nerds,” but in These Times, I’m hungry for this kind of low-grade scolding. So, keep it up nerds!
[via The Guardian]
Jessie Gaynor
Jessie Gaynor is a senior editor at Lit Hub whose writing has appeared in McSweeney's, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. Her debut novel, The Glow was published by Random House in 2023. You can buy it here.



















