Last week, the SO received as change at the post office here not the expected Sackie, but a British Twopence coin! She tried to convince them it had come from their machine, but no one there would believe her. She also tried putting the coin into the machine, to see if it would accept it, and it did not.
Well - this seemed odd, until I just received an e-mail from a work acquaintence locally, who also received a British Twopence coin instead of a Sackie - also from a USPS stamp machine!
Comparing the two coins - it seems they are very close in size, but not that close. They are also close in weight, but not that close either, IMO.
So, my GQ is - is this a fluke, or has this been in the news that anyone has heard? I have searched, but not found any reports myself.
Sorry, I can’t give you a better answer than this but:
The Twonie was probably wrapped up in the roll with the sackies when it got to the Post office, and nobody noticed it when it was loaded into the machine.
Happens all the time with Canadian Pennies, because they are virtually identical in size to US pennies.
However, Since I have never compared a Sackie to a Twonie, I can’t say how close they are in size.
Now the question becomes: is this going to become a national thing, or is it just the guy who fills up the local stamp machine skimming a dollar here and there by inserting a foreign coin and pocketing the dollar coin?
I would find out if the machines are serviced by an in-house employee or if there is a person who services all the machines in a geographical area. Then start complaining before it gets out of hand.
Just because the one machine didn’t accept it on one try doesn’t mean some of the machines won’t sometimes accept the British twopence as a sackie. There remains the possibility that somebody discovered this, and a few tuppence coins have been floating about the system ever since, rather than malicious intent by a USPS employee.
yabob While anything is possible, it is improbable. Modern vending machines are sophisticated enough to reject bronze two pence pieces. Just as modern public telephones in the US reject a Canadian quarter.
And Anthracite’s mention that this has happened in two separate machines but both in the same city(?), makes me suspect a single person doing this.
I didn’t mean anything about USPS employees as a group. Any demographic group will contain a person or two who is constantly looking to find a way to beat the system.
That’s what you get for trying to read at 3:00 in the morning. Mistaking -pence for -nie… Feh
samclem’s got an idea there. Maybe whoever is in charge of putting the change in the machine is taking a few sackies and putting twopence (can’t get it wrong this time :o ) in it’s place?