I was getting something at an A&W and there was a big glass jar for donations. I saw several $2 notes in it, from the series that was used in the 1950s and 1960s.
I asked the clerk if I could buy them, paying more than face value. She hadn’t noticed them, and was intrigued, but she said “Sure”. So I got four of them, in reasonable condition.
Then she said that the jar was collecting for the Humboldt Broncos, so I put more money in. She suddenly had tears in her eyes and said “It’s just so sad.”
(Of course, that little donation wasn’t made through GoFundMe, so apparently I’m a bad person who doesn’t care about the tragedy.)
I liked that series. I kept a one, two, ten and twenty for a few years until one night I decided I’d rather have a dozen beers and a quarter ounce of home grown. $33 ain’t what it used to be.
No thread about old Canadian notes is complete without a link to the mysterious Lido on Broadway in Vancouver. Over $400,000 stashed away in bills from the 30s and 40s discovered by the company hired to clean the junk out of the place!!
When I first immigrated to Canada, in 1962, I made it a practice to never spend a $2, I put them in my sock drawer at the end of the day. After a year, they paid for my vacation trip, on the first paid vacation I ever had in my young working life…
“The face of each bill,
the face of the Queen,
The back of each bill,
A beautiful scene.”
We had beautiful money. I guess we still do, though I do miss $1 and $2 bills. Loonies and toonies just don’t show off our land as well as the old bills did.
I saw that. You’re right. The outpouring of support was amazing. The people at Humboldt and the area have commented how overwhelmed they’ve been by the reaction, and how grateful they are for the support.
I think I have one of those in an album around here.
Paper currency used to look the way it should look. Most modern currency, from many countries including my own, is starting to look like Monopoly money.
I’ve often had the same thought. American dollars used to be so uniform and unchanging in appearence that anyone over the age of 2 knew what it was supposed to look like. Now currency changes so often and is so busy the average person doesn’t really know what a “normal” bill looks like.
Back when we switched over to the new at the time five dollar bill in Canada, you could I guess still get fives from the ATM. So someone got held up at an ATM and the robber beat up the mark pretty bad, cause he did not believe it was real currency.
Its a shame whats happened with our currency, coins do last longer but…
I recall the Treasury Department said that was one of the point behind the changes: people were not focusing on money they were getting, so making it different makes people look more closely at their bills (and thus deterring counterfeiting).
I don’t get the criticisms about notes changing over time. Change is normal in life, especially if a long-lasting status quo makes it easier for criminal activity to occur. If changing it up helps to deter counterfeits, why not?
Plus, when you have a living Queen instead of dead presidents on your money, you do have to update it from time to time.
