I was just cleaning out my wallet and was dismayed to find THREE Canadian coins, totaling a whopping twelve cents. I bet whichever retail monkey gave them to me was happy to find some dope clueless enough about living on the border that she didn’t even examine them. That’ll teach me.
If you’re a. nearby and b. want twelve Canadian cents, let me know. I’m not going to mail them as that would be silly.
It’s kind of sneaky of the Canadians to have coins pretty much the exact same size and shape as their American counterparts. Or possibly it’s sneaky of us. I don’t know who’s copying whom, but it’s awfully weird when you think about it.
(Seriously, if you or some other kind Doper could send me a sackie and a couple of those presidential dollar coins, I’d happily paypal you the postage. I’ve never see any of them.)
You’re not being whooshed. AFAICT, Canadian money isn’t readily accepted around here, but there’s a lot of it floating around that people try to palm off to the unsuspecting. Maybe some longer time Michiganders can correct me if I am wrong. It’s also possible that Canadian money is accepted closer to the border. (I am about 40 miles away.)
I think the bigger question is why you have coins in your wallet.
I’ll never understand people who do that…a wallet should be flat, and as such only have paper and plastic in them. Coins have no place in anyone’s wallet.
I gave a(n apparently) homeless guy a handful of change down in SoDo right after I got back from my trip to visit my family in Canada. I apologised for not having American money, and hefted over the last of my loonies and toonies. He was fascinated by them, but looked rather dubious when I told him the Canadian dollar was pretty strong right now, and he could get them exchanged for a fistful of bills.
I gave him ~$12 CAN. Shit, I don’t have any use for it here! Might as well get someone drunk on Thunderbird. Well, as long as the clerk doesn’t think it’s made of chocolate, anyway.
Its a conspiracy, i tell you! Those wily canuks are tired of polar bears and snow, and are trying to take over the US and make it her southernmost province so they can get beach houses in California and Florida. They’ve begun by infiltrating our money supply, trying to debase the value of good old american coins while simultaneously making canadian coinage the defacto currency of America.
I don’t get the OP. Just spend it the next time you buy something. It works just as well as US money anywhere in the US I’ve ever been. Nobody much looks at change, and the farther from the border the more true that is.
I’ve always wondered this myself, and after having done some cursory research, I believe the answer is that the whole system developed when the entire eastern part of North America was still British colonies.
I have a handful of Guernsey and Jersey coins left over from a trip last week. They’re exactly the same size and shape as the corresponding UK coins, and are worth exactly the same, but have crabs, sailing dinghies and other nautical ephemera on them and are pretty hard to pass off over here. Vending machines take them no trouble, though. Strangely, I also seem to have been palmed off with a coin from the United Arab Emirates that closely resembles a 20p coin, at least in a dark pub.
More annoying, but cool in a nostalgic way is the fact that they still use £1 notes there, which haven’t been seen on the mainland for over 20 years.
I’d give 'em to chowder, if he’d agree to give Guernsey a second chance.
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