When traveling around the nation, Joe Biden often gives out coins bearing the vice presidential seal to firefighters, policemen and the military. The game goes that the next time you see the Vice President, whoever doesn’t have the “command coin” owes the other person a drink.
The only documented exchange of a command coin (as far as we know) occurred on Sept. 11, 2012, after the Vice President gave a speech in Shanksville, Penn., honoring the victims of Flight 93 near the rural farm where it crashed. At a barbeque with Station 627 of the Shanksville Volunteer Fire Company, Deputy Chief Brad Shober approached Biden with a coin he’d received the previous year. And it seems he caught the veep off-guard — Biden was coinless. But not one to shy from a firm promise, the Vice President went back to his limo, pulled out a Coke Zero (Biden is a noted teetotaler) and said, “Pretend it’s a beer, you got a rain check to come to the White House.” Biden then called for his assistant Franny to give Shober his card, and said, “He is going to call you. This is no bulls–.”