The company I used to work for moved into a new (to them) factory in Birmingham, England. The reason the factory was available was because the previous owners (who made biscuits) had been buying Dollars. They imported a good deal of flour from the US, so if the Dollar/GBP rate was rising, buying the dollars in advance made good sense. Unfortunately for them, and for hundreds of their employees, the rate moved the other way and nearly pushed them into bankruptcy.
If they were only buying dollars in the amounts they would normally spend on dollar-denominated commodities, a drop in the USD alone shouldn’t have affected them too much. What they lose on their currency hedge they gain in cheaper flour. It sounds like there was either something else going on (a rise in commodities) or they went past hedging into speculating.
As other’s have pointed out, it’s not realistic to think that an amount of VND bought for USD20 will ever be sold for USD400,000.
But, hypothetically, if the average Joe found himself in possession of USD400,000 worth of foreign currency and he wished to sell it for USD, he can do that at a bank. If he actually wants to take the USD400,000 out in cash, he’ll need to give his local branch a couple of days notice so that they will have that amount of cash on hand. It’s more likely that he will simply want to sell the foreign currency and lodge the proceeds to a USD account, though.
Where I live, you can do this at pretty well any bank branch. It may be that in the US you can only do this at larger branches, or designated branches.
For this amount of money, it would be worth while ringing around a few banks and asking what they will buy your currency for, net of commission and charges. But it won’t make a huge difference; for transactions of that size, the market is competitive.
Expect plenty of, um, interest from the bank. Anyone walking in selling USD400,000 of foreign banknotes is going to set all their money-laundering alarms ringing loudly - doubly so if he wants to walk out with cash. Assume that this transaction will be reported to the authorities. Expect to have to convincingly establish your identity and bona fides.
I’m pretty sure the average bank would refuse the transaction. They usually don’t have the expertise to tell if arbitrary foreign notes are forgeries. On small transactions they accept the risk, on one this size they’d just say no. You’d need to go to a foreign currency specialist or the main branch in a large city at the very least.
Pretty sure I got almost a million dong (worth $44US) stashed away somewhere from last time I did a visa run to Saigon, so if the OP is right then I’m sorted!
As an “expat” I keep an eye on certain exchange rates -
We recently changed $20k of the local currency (approx $16k USD) when the rate was favourable - it had moved about 5% in the last three months.
I have seen swings approaching 10% in the span of 12 months -
One thing to remember would be respective interest rates - we now have the money on Fixed Deposit at 3.xx% - whereas here it would be of the order of 1.xx%
Double post
Several decades ago I won the equivalent of a few $1000 at a casino in South Korea. It was only when I got to the airport that I learned the won was then non-convertible. (They did let me change the large private banknotes into central bank notes.) I furiously bought gifts at the airport gift shop almost missing my plane, but still had banknotes left over. (Later I learned that taking the notes out of the country was illegal. :dubious: It would also have been illegal to bring them back to South Korea!)
I had some trouble converting those won. One bank in Europe counted them laboriously but at the end told me they wouldn’t change any – some of the notes had different pictures than others so they weren’t sure which were genuine. :smack: (Had I sorted them myself, and taken one type to one branch and the other type to another branch would they have changed them without complaint? :dubious: )
It’s easy to keep an eye on past rates; future rates are more relevant. Please advise which way the Thai baht is moving in near future.