In your heart, you know he's ... dead.

One of the few good things about spam is its ability to entertain, albeit unintentionally. And one of this morning's batch of spam caught my eye as I was about to delete it: it claimed to be from Barry Goldwater. Hmm. Spam from beyond the grave? Might be worth looking at.

Alas, no; it was actually sent on behalf of Barry Goldwater, Jr., hawking a legal tender 1933 $20 double eagle gold piece, for the amazing price of $19.99. Seems unlikely, doesn't it? Well, it should be entertaining figuring out the catch. It turns out that the coin being sold really is legal tender, just not legal tender of the U.S. It's from the CNMI (Commonwealth of the N. Mariana Islands), whose budget appears to come from making stamps and coins to sell to collectors, a practice only recently adopted by the U.S. Mint. And the coin is described in the email - but not on the website - as being 20 mil, which is mighty tiny - only 1/50 of an inch across.

And if this particular coin isn't to your liking - perhaps you have eyesight as poor as mine, and you'd like to be able to see the coin you're buying - you could instead purchase the official NY state quarter which now carries a portrait of A-Rod (a colorized U.S. Mint coin) or a legal tender 1 Crown coin with Harry Potter on the front and Queen Elizabeth II on the back (from the Isle of Man).