I collect squished pennies, so I do carry a small change purse with a lot of quarters and pennies that are over 30 years old (so that they are not clad coins). However, the pennies that are clad get thrown into the coin jar, awaiting their destiny with my savings account with the rest of the coins.
This isn’t true. The $1 and $2 bills are still legal tender, though they did in fact remove them from circulation as they arrived in banks, so there just aren’t many out there anymore (though I did see one just a couple of weeks ago, from the 1969 series, even!).
Not quite the same thing, but in 1991 the Brits changed their 5p coins. The old coins were the same size as a shilling, and in fact shillings were still in use as 5ps (as florins were still being used as 10ps). The new coins were considerably smaller. The government simply announced that after a certain date (about six months lead time, I think) only the new 5p coins could be used, and anyone who didn’t want to lose money had up until that date to cash in the old 5p coins* they had in their possession.
- As well as any shillings and florins.
18 dollar coins weigh 8.1*18=145 grams. My cell phone–a pretty typical smartphone–weighs 135 grams. Together with your quarters, your coinage weighed nearly a half pound. Unless you have a brickphone from the 80’s, I don’t see how the coins could be less noticeable. They also jangle.
Zimbabwe is full of old, crumpled, barely legible two dollar bills. They have been using the dollar for some time, and apparently they got their currency stock from some kind of currency thrift store. Anyway, they are pretty much as common as ones there.
18 one-dollar bills would be a pretty sizable lump in my wallet, too. They might not jangle, but they’d make me lean to the left a bit. 
This is a really strange argument. In Australia we have $1,$2 coins same as Canada. You just don’t carry around 18 1 coins at once, they get used too quickly because they’re useful or you get less of them because you also get $2 coins in change.
So rather than carrying 18 $1 coins, you’d carry 2 or 3 at once, then $2 bills and $5 bills. How hard is that?
This is why I like GQ. Now I don’t have to start a new thread with a query for prices.
But I don’t get the money. Two dollars for five blowjobs? Or 2.50 for one?
Also, who has 18 $1 bills on them, other than people going to a strip club?
I wouldn’t carry that many singles either in coin or bill form. I was just responding to SCAdian’s claim that 18 dollar coins and 12 quarters were less noticeable than his other pocket items.
I never keep coins of any kind in my pocket for any length of time. They all go in the jar at the end of the day.
I did once receive 14 dollar coins from the post office after buying a book of stamps from a vending machine with a $20. That was annoying.
It would be possible to get 18 of them in one transaction in the US from a vending machine that gives them out in change. (Something like a train ticket machine that has to accept $20s.)
Vending machines that give out notes as change are common in Australia / Japan / UK. What’s stopping the vending machines giving out $2 and $5 notes as change?
Anyone who gets tipped will usually have multiple singles on them, if they didn’t bother to cash them in after the shift.
I apologize if this is rambling or pointless, but it is one of the only threads I have read from start to finish and some things seem to not be touched on.
After 20+ years abroad, miitary and civilian, I find the American coinage and paper notes a bit of an anachronism(?). I also was paid in $2 bills in the navy, but it was in Key West in the 60s, when some merchants had regular prices, tourist prices and navy prices.
As mentioned repeatedly upthread, bills wear out.
I was in Italy before and after they converted to the Euro (Spain also, a bit later). Trying to find a 500 lira note for the toll booth, or a 10 centisimi coin for elevators was a treat.
Now the coinage is normalized, at least for the present, with 1, 2 and 5 cent coins of a copper like material (not always available in more affluent regions, but used in all). Then 10 20 and fifty in a gold color and the 1 and 2 euro coins in a “doughnut” with a silver center and gold ring.
It all works.
In US military circles overseas, there are chronic shortages of small coins, to such an extent that change may be given in “POGS”, which can only be used in those military circles.
Countries that peg their currencies to the dollar are perhaps only artificially saving money by not having to print their own, or not having to lose face by re valuating the native currency. Can’t see that as much of our problem, though.
Not sure of my point, or even if there really is one, but, as one who has lived and worked in numerous countries and used multiple types of monetary systems, I can only say that in America we seem to hold on to our prejudices and preferences way more tightly than in other less enlightened societies.
Bahimes writing from holiday in Spain with half a kilo of odd coins in pocket.
They’re not being withdrawn from circulation. As I noted, the mint has a surplus of 1.4 billion of them. You should have no trouble getting any pre-Chester A. Arthur dollars. It’s that the newer ones produced as of April 2012 are not being put into mass circulation and only available on demand. It’s the coins made with Chester A. Arthur and those after that the mint is charging a premium for.
I live in the UK and I don’t think I’ve ever come across a vending machine that gives notes in change. In fact I often feed a £20 note into the London Underground machines for a £5 purchase just to get some £1 and £2 coins, because I find them useful.
I think some supermarket self-checkouts may give notes in change but I couldn’t swear to it as I very rarely use them.
Oooh, a money thread. We haven’t had one in a few months.
Interesting note: I once gave a $50 bill as change for a $100. Earlier in the day, someone had paid me with a $50. When I received the $100, I didn’t have any $20s, so they got the $50 (plus smaller bills).
A couple weeks ago I was told this by a bank teller who wanted me to pass it along to my boss.
Someone has been marking the edges of $2 bills in red. They had a couple as examples; the red is only on the margin, not obscuring anything. According to her, the Fed will not take these marked bills since they’ve been defaced. I asked if the same applied to those “where’s George” bills, since they are being defaced too. She said no, just the outlined ones. The outlined bills will still be read by money counting machines, so that’s not the issue. In fact, she couldn’t really give me a rational reason why, just that the Fed won’t take them. Which means the bank doesn’t want them, so we should refuse them from our customers.
Anyone else heard this?
Sounds like an urban legend to me.
Yes and no, in my experience. One bank ran out of them in the vault and said the Fed wouldn’t give them small quantities, so they had to order $10,000 (or some large number) and they didn’t want to have those hanging around forever. So unless I wanted to take $10K all at once, they weren’t going to accommodate me.
I have a friend who loves buying lotto tickets with $2s and he goes to Bank of America and gets $100 stacks of $2bills every week.