I agree – complicated as all heck. Since reading this post of yours, I looked up the Wiki article on Tibetan currency: have by no means got my head round all the intricacies told of there – but, yes, tangka and srang (mis-spelled in my original post: I was going by what I thought I remembered to have been printed in the stamp catalogue) were for sure two different, parallel currency-type outfits. The “four-and-three-quarter” business was thus about equivalency, not a parallel with “cents / dollars” or “pence / pounds”. (One tends to forget, that over many centuries before total annexation in 1950; in the frequently fluctuating relations between Tibet and China, the former was at times, to a greater or lesser degree, under the rule of the latter.)
Further re srangs: Wiki’s coverage of banknotes, for various srang denominations, is interesting. It appears that the notes were machine-printed, but numbered by hand. Some years ago, I noticed in an antique / curio shop in London, a pre-1950 100-srang note (the largest denomination, I gather) – a large and splendidly colourful thing. Would have loved to buy it, but the price was not small. Fantasies prompted, about how it would be received if one were to go to the station in Lhasa – terminus of the quite recently opened rail link with the rest of China; ask for a ticket to Beijing; and proffer such a banknote in payment.
Not complicated divisions, but I always liked the fact that Burmese notes came in 15, 35 and 75 kyat denominations, because of the mad dictator’s thing for numerology.
(I understand that moderately rude language is permissible on TSD) – so; another diverting thing concerning Burma and numbers, is that when counting in the Burmese language: 1 is “tit”, and 8 is “shit”.
Saudi Arabia had bizarre coinage right up nearly to the present. I once got a 4 qirsh coin in change. Paper money was not introduced until the 1950s, and at first, it was only exchange coupons for pilgrims arriving for the haj. The Saudi riyal was divided into 20 qirsh, but two different mintings of the coin had different silver fineness, so some qirsh took 22 to make a riyal. Decimal currency first came in the 60s, when the qursh was subdivided into fifths.
Greetings all,
as an addendum doe’s anyone know of any nation not using a decimal system of currency, indeed does anyone have direct experience of that system?
Peter
Taking it that you’re thinking of the present day; not of centuries-in-the-past, when decimal currency was hardly conceived of, if at all.
The following are “to the best of my knowledge”: all the world’s currencies are now decimal. The last country in the world to decimalise its currency, was Nigeria in 1973. That was quite shortly after my own country, the UK, which went decimal in February 1971. I was aged 22 at that time, so had a couple of decades’ experience of pre-decimal UK money – 12 pennies = 1 shilling, 20 shillings = 1 pound.
Essentially it was what we grew up with and were used to; so it was a “fish in water” thing. For a good many years (starting post-1971) I earned my living in accounts and wages offices – oddly and unsuitably, because I’m pretty damned innumerate: just the way things worked out. With the assistance of calculators and adding-machines, I could just cope with such work. Admit to being glad that I did so only in decimal times: faced with our pre-decimal currency, and without mechanical aids (as would probably have been the case in those times), I couldn’t have handled it.
I thought there were a couple that divided their larger unit into 5. Wiki:
So, eliminating SMOM, which seemingly exists to create arguments concerning whether it counts at all in discussions like this, and a couple tiny countries with useless subdivisions of 5, no. And having a subdivision which is a factor of a power of 10 is sort of decimalized anyway. The coins do come out even at some decimal place, and you could price things in decimal, as long as you stuck to large enough steps. Somewhat similar to the boat the US would be in if the penny were eliminated and everything would have to be priced to increments of $0.05. REALLY non-decimalized currencies have a division with a factor other than 5 or 2, such as the old UK 12 pennies to a shilling.
As I’ve complained of before – TSD’s “gear” doesn’t allow the quoting of quotes – so I’m not able to reproduce the part of this post of yabob’s, concerning Madagascar. Anyway, crucial part thereof, 5 iraimbilanja - 1 ariary (which = 5 Malagasy francs). This set-up made official, I gather, from 2005.
In this thread re complicated currencies, I’d been wanting to cite Madagascar. Recalling the splendid book by Dervla Murphy about her travels in Madagascar in 1984 – alas, I don’t possess a copy of the book – I recall her lamenting the hideous complexities of monetary transactions there, on her visit. Officially then, it was 100 cents = 1 Malagasy franc; but in the marketplace, things were insanely complicated for Ms. Murphy, who is – like me – borderline innumerate. In parallel with the official set-up, there was an unofficial one whereby amounts of money were referred to as ariarys, piastres, and sundry other things (I don’t recall iraimbilanjas – but anyway, various terms in the local language which tends anyway, toward “words as long as your arm”). The author had travelling with her, her daughter, who – unlike Mum – was very sharp about figures-related stuff, and was able to sort all this out: author implies ruefully that otherwise, she’d have been torn between getting the next plane home, and suicide ;).
When traveling and buying things that will cost well under a dollar, such as fruit, etc, and when I have a huge handful of local coins, I just hauled out the coins and let the merchant pick out what was a fair price. I think I got good prices most of the time, and if I was ever cheated, it was for no more than a quarter.
In theory, all US dollar currency (bills or coins) ever made by the US government that have not been returned to the government are legal tender today. So, you could try to buy a bus ticket from NY to Boston with a stack of these, if you can find any.
Confederate currency doesn’t count - that’s not legal tender, though an antiques dealer might give you a few dollars for it.
25 cent bills / notes – " if that doesn’t beat all !" As in my facetious Lhasa scenario: this would seem, at the best, not a way to make oneself popular. Trying the trick in the US might, I suspect, risk attracting the attention of the men in white coats; trying it in Tibet, likely to attract the attention of the Public Security Bureau, or whatever nasty special equivalent that outfit has for that particular part of the world.
