In this column, Cecil lays to rest the myth that it’s illegal to deface coins, as long as one is not doing so ‘fraudulently’:
My question: is it illegal to deface paper money similarly – say, by writing ‘Happy Birthday’ on a twenty? I can’t tell whether the aforequoted statute addresses this.
The citation emphasizes coins quite a bit, but titled chapter states ‘COINS AND CURRENCY’.
The column is actually a Staff Report.
Moved from CoCC to CoSR.
I participate in the wheresgeorge.com currency tracking project. I regularly stamp bills with the web address. Their site’s FAQ says that it is legal so long as you do not render the bill unusable, or whatever that means. I assume as long as it is not excessively defaced.
Adding a zero behind the $1 on a dollar bill, and then trying to pass it as a $10 bill would be “fradulently defacing” a bill. (And pretty stupid, too, given all the other differences.)
Writing or rubber-stamping on a bill sufficient to make it difficult to determine the denomination is defacement that would “render the bill unusable”. (Also pretty unlikely, given all the different markings on a bill. You’d have to nearly cover the whole bill to actually do this.)
On the other hand, only the Federal Reserve Banks are required to accept your currency. Any local business or bank could decide they don’t like your currency with writing or rubber stamps on it, and decline to accept it. That doesn’t usually happen, because businesses generally like it when customers give them money. But they could refuse it.
Several years ago, there was a group trying to show the impact of GLBT customers on the local economy by encouraging members to rubber stamp a pink “GAY MONEY” on their currency before spending it. One local bank, reflecting the right-wing views of the owner, refused to accept such currency, as it was ‘defaced’. Checking with the local Federal Reserve showed that: 1) this was not ‘defacement’ that bothered the Treasury Department, but 2) the bank was within it’s rights to decline to accept such currency.
Turned out that it was equally within their rights for customers to remove their accounts from this bank! (It’s no longer in business.) This bank policy was a especially a nuisance to the local merchants, who were just trying to deposit the currency left in their cash registers at days end. (Some of them sorted out the ‘GAY MONEY’ and kept that in their registers for making change, depositing the unmarked bills. This greatly increasing the ‘GAY MONEY’ in local circulation, and exaggerating the effect of GLBT customers!)
I was at the Zoo over the weekend, and the Zoo had a penny engraving machine. Im sure you know the type… 51 cents, with 4 design paterns, and a big crank in the middle of the machine. You turn the handle, and turn, and turn, and then the penny comes out in the preselected design.
These machines used to cite the Defacing clause, and stated that it was not illegal. Alas, the machine At the zoo did not have the citation. My Mom then asked, and I was at a loss.
Can some one please help me here?
The answer to all of these is probably no, so the Treasury doesn’t care at all.
(In fact, they probably like it. You’ve given them 1¢ for about 1/5 of a cent worth of copper, and now you are not going to spend it at all. Net profit to them of 4/5ths of a cent. Just like the Post Office likes stamp collectors, who buy stamps but never use them to send mail.)
At last, something upon which I can contribute! Woot!
I am, and have been for many years, a collector of elongated coins. We even have our own society.
So y’all be careful up their with that furrin pennies, y’hear me?
I knew there had to be some other Georgers here.
‘coin clipping’ where you shaved some silver off the coin and then passed it on to someone else, having kept a little of its value for yourself, is what these laws were designed to criminalise. Clipping was rampant at various periods in history and was severely punished in medieval times.
There are also other cases, such as the early nickel that gave its denomination only as “V”, so that sharpies gold-plated them and passed them off as half-eagles.
Rock on! Thanks, Jonathan. I’ve got about two hundred of the little things. I get them wherever I go. I’ve even been promised by Mrs. Z that I can get my own squisher for our 10th anniversary.