what my grandparents and my parents and then I carried around in our pockets back in the day
(I think I may be getting carried away with this x-tych thing)
Factoids:
1. The Liberty nickel in the top row ended its run in 1912 but 5 samples were struck with the date 1913. They somehow got out of the mint. Three have been donated to museums and two are still in private hands. They are valued at many millions of dollars.
2. The Morgan Dollar (upper right) is the most seriously collected, studied and written about coin in world history.
3. The second row is known as the artist's series since each coin was designed by a different famous artist. President Theodore Roosevelt wanted to replace the "ugly" designs of the day with those worthy of a great nation.
4. The Lincoln cent was the first general circulation US coin to contain the likeness of a real person.
5. The Buffalo or Indian Head nickel was not based on an actual individual but rather a combination of men. It was the only common 20th century coin not containing the motto "In God We Trust" (the 10 and 20 dollar gold pieces of 1907 and 1908 had no motto but were obviously very rare)
6. The Standing Liberty quarter as shown here was originally designed with an exposed right breast. Public outcry caused it to be covered a year later.
7. The Washington quarter was issued in 1932 as a single year commemoration of the 200th anniversary of Washington's birth. It was so popular that it permanently replaced the Standing Liberty. This required a special act of Congress.
8. Right after the Second World War, all coins contained the likeness of real people. Miss Liberty, after a run of 155 years, was gone for good. An attempt to resurrect her on the dollar coin ran afoul of feminists and the star-crossed Susan B Anthony dollar was issued. The opportunist senator who pushed it was defeated and the coin was dumped after three years. Served the politically correct bastards right. :)
9. In 1964, the same act of congress was invoked to issue the Kennedy half dollar to permanently replace the coin containing the likeness of Ben Franklin.

If you like coins and you have the time, view in the original.