US President Donald Trump, after days of hinting, officially declared that he would no longer be holding his scheduled summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in June.
Now the actual, you know, boring parts of diplomacy like "meeting" and "discussing issues" may not have worked out, BUT FEAST YOUR EYES ON THIS.
Challenge coins aren't weird in and of themselves — they're definitely an old military tradition.
Here's former defense secretary Ash Carter handing out some coins to active-duty Olympians and Paralympians back in 2016 in the preferred "secret handshake" distribution method.
The Trump-Kim summit coins' existence was first reported Monday and the internet went nuts over them, given both their "cart before the horse" nature and the decision to dub Kim "Supreme Leader" — which isn't his title.
The fervor over the coins meant that by Thursday's announcement, the second-biggest question — after "um, so are we no longer interested in peace?" — was "what about the coins tho?"
Who gets the Summit coins?
Like...where do they go now? Can we have them?
Now I really want one of the summit coins
Fear not though: For those who are interested, replicas of the coins are up for sale at the official White House Gift Shop* for the low, low price of just $19.95!
Guys, the US-North Korea summit coin replica is the WH gift shop's "deal of the day" https://t.co/kzhFNOMHRR
*The gift shop isn't actually run by the White House itself but, according to its website, was established in 1946 by "Permanent Presidential Memorandum and Volunteer Members of U.S. Secret Service." Whatever that means.
The gift shop website has been down for a huge chunk of Thursday, but luckily this photo of "a news editor" looking at the site's page shows that we are not just making this up.
And if you think that just because the summit is off for now that you can't own your own piece of (probably) aborted history, boy are you wrong.
Disclaimer, on White House Gift Shop website, for those who ordered $24.95 Trump-Kim summit coins.
But buyer beware: Anthony Giannini, the chair of the gift shop, told the Washington Examiner that the coin's design will be different than the one the WHCA has pressed.
"Last night we had thousands and thousands ... of friends from Korea" on the site, Giannini said. "And they bought a lot." But, he added, some people have been trying to get their money back since the summit was canceled.
That hasn't stopped some folks though from doing everything they can to get their hands on the replicas.
I’ve been trying to buy that stupid summit coin for an hour now and the White House gift shop website is being balky
And if you think there's no metaphor to be had in people still desperately wanting a gold-stamped icon of a peace summit that likely will never happen, then you haven't been living in the same 2018 as the rest of us.
Which leaves us with this question though: WHAT HAPPENED TO THE 250 REAL-DEAL COINS?
Pentagon spokespeople directed BuzzFeed News to the WHCA, which hasn't responded to requests for comment, leaving us unsure just where these vestiges of what may have been are currently located.
