Hey,If you THINK the U.S. has crazy currency,go to Italy.Last time I was there the exchange rate was 1740 Lire to the dollar.They have NO coins that seemed useful except those weird Gettones (sp?)used in pay phones only.The smallest bill I saw was a 100 lire (17.4 cents ).I bought a can of Coke in Leonardo Da Vinci Airport for 1500 lire.(freaky)
England had a 5 pound coin that resemble a 1 pound coin only thicker.I still have 5 of them as “souveniers”.who needs nearly 30$ in foreign coins? It’s not like I’ll be returning any time soon.
Five pound coins are fairly unusual, and although legal tender are not common currency – they’re normally just commemorative issues. One pound coins are small, chunky and gold-coloured, and two pound coins are much larger and two-tone (gold and silver coloured).
I don’t particularly care for American money, because I constantly confuse the bills when I count it. Like, up until yesterday I was convinced I had only $19 to my name – a ten, four singles, and a five. Come to find out, when I recounted, that the thing I thought was a fiver was actually a fifty dollar bill. If I’d known that I would have had dinner last night instead of trying to save all my money til next payday.
I love Canadian money and regret being just far enough south of the border that we don’t circulate it. If i drive about an hour and a half, so I’m about 50 miles north of Albany, New York, the convenience stores start occasionally accepting Canadian currency.
When I make my Great Canadian Road Trip next spring I’m coming home with some toonies.
I understand that the “in” thing to do in Canadian strip clubs these days is for the stripper to lie on her back and put up her legs as if they’re field goal posts. The patrons then try to propel the loonies and toonies through her legs as if they’re trying to score a field goal. Big laffs! :rolleyes: Anyhoo, the patrons dig it and the strippers get tipped; it works out for everybody. I guess the Canadians are big on inventive solutions to “sticky” 
problems.
My USD $.02
Only when you have gone out for the evening and drank your ass off can one appreciate colour coded money… I was always afraid of spending American money during a night of carousing thinking that I would rip myself off by spending the wrong denomination.
I miss paper ones and twos although I understand the reasoning behind the move to use coins. Small denomination paper just doesn’t hold up very well while coins will last indefinately.
A few years back I traveled to Jamaica and they were still trading 1 Dollar paper currency - at that time 1 Jamaican Dollar was equal to about $.05 US (5 cents). Stacks of cash would hardly buy you a nice meal.
I was in Italy a long time ago (1970’s), and they were having such a currency shortage that commercial banks issued
tiny-denomination (like a hundred lire) banknotes. The ones I saw looked like they were hand-signed by ballpoint pen,
and sometimes they carried endorsements on the back.
when I was in the US as a student, there were a couple of times I got short-changed because I got confused by the bills all being the same colour - is that just something you learn to be more cautious about? Anyway, found it annoying.
BYTW, the Bank of Canada is gradully withdrawing the 1,000 bill from circulation - with modern electronic debit and credit cards, no real use for them, other than money laundering and drug deals.
Scottish bloke here and I think I know the answer to this. The major Scottish banks print their own money (I guess under licence from the Royal Mint). Whereas the Bank of England elected to stop printing the pound note years ago, the Scottish ones still continue to do so (or they at least still issue them). Pound notes are seldom seen in Scotland now though they do still pop up from time to time. Ignorance in parts of England leads some people to think that because the ENGLISH pound note is no longer legal tender in England, then the Scottish one isn’t either. To be honest I find the pound note to be a bit of a pain these days, you look in you’re wallet and see paper and think …Way hey…beer money!!.. not so, a pound note will barely get you a half pint.
There is an up side to all this though. More than once a pub in England has given me change for 5 pounds when I’ve only given them a Scottish 1 pound note! That works out to 4 pints for the price of a half! Tough to resist.
In answer to javaman’s original question, I visit the States often and am always surprised by the lack of difference in the different denominations of American bank notes. I have often wondered how folk with vision problems get by when all the money is the same size and color. This is a worry for me as I suffer vision problems from time to time. It may be coincidence but it seem to happen around the time when I get 4 pints for the price of a half:).
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*Originally posted by javaman *
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One of the lamer things about dollar coins is that people are reluctant to spend them because of their novelty. Like with the half-dollar, people seem to think that they must save every one they come across, which only helps to end their circulation. Spend 'em! Don’t save 'em!
Ignorance just about covers it. I have terrible trouble visiting my mother in Scotland (we’re all English, she just lives there), then coming home to London and trying to use any notes, not just the one pound. I’ve been questioned so often, it really annoys me, now I’m at the point that if they won’t accept the note, I leave the shop without buying anything. (I understand the moves towards devolution if this is how my compatriots treat our fellow countrymen).
Speaking as an Englishman living abroad I have to say that the way US money all looks the same is a bit of a problem, but because of the relatively low denominations you do get to feel pretty large when you go into a bar and pull out a huge wad of money, even if it turns out not to add up to much. The Cloggies have a NLG 25,- note which comes in surprisingly useful when making change and the like.
one advantage to having all the bills the same color is that criminals can’t get a quick extimate of how much cash you have from across the room as they can with the pretty colored ones. but then I do have some curancy from other countries. 1,000 to 1,000,000 Turk Lira bills, a variaty of Canadien coins and bills, even a Loonie. some Saudi, Thai, and Korean. They do look good, but easy to identify the denominations from a distance.
I think that’s a visually-impaired person: it’s what the brightly-coloured shapes are for (the diamond on the £10, the square on the £20). A colour-blind person can simply …er… read the printed denomination.
Like a lot of other European posters, I find US currency difficult to use. I’m used to different denominations of notes being different colours and sizes and I’m used to coins actually saying what they’re worth. If you think about it, it’s not obvious to a foreigner what a nickel and a dime are worth.
I have to say, I wasn’t aware that this was a serious problem in Europe, partly, at least, because you don’t usually have to pull out a big wad of notes and rifle through them like you have to with US currency. You can take a quick peek in your wallet and pull out the note of the most appropriate size.
I used to manage a movie theater and we’d have a change order once a week, usually consisting of a ton of ones. I know the armored transport people won’t be too thrilled if, instead of having them in a handbag, they’ll have to cart each ones order out on a dolly (as they had to do with our periodic quarters order). The ones coin (which I completely support btw–it’s about damn time!) would take up a lot more truck space, be heavier, and be more dangerous to transport from the truck to a store’s saferoom. I can understand why they wouldn’t like it.
I also have to wonder how many machines that retailers use to count up change at the end of the night (like ours in the theater) have been converted to accomodate the new S$. Also, most retail jobs I’ve worked had tills with only 5 slots, one of which was a “utility” slot for rubber bands, etc., since you often had nowhere to put them in your workspace. That would have to change also. It’s a great idea, but like any major change, there will be lots of small logistical bumps to contend with before people fully accept the transition, I think.