Where are all the foreign euro coins?

Factual Questions
21

There are some figures here: http://www.ireland.travel.ie/aboutus/facts_numbers.asp

Of 6.2 million overseas visitors in 2000, roughly 3.5 million came from Britain, 1.45 million from “mainland Europe” and 950,000 from the US.

Note that these are figures for all travel, not just tourist travel, but so far as promoting the circulation of euro currency is concerned the distinction between tourist and business travel is probably unimportant.

The total spend by overseas visitors was about £2.1 billion, of which £873 million was from Britain, £578 million was from mainland Europe and £557 million was from North America (i.e. US and Canada).

So visitors from the eurozone are both more numerous and more signficant in terms of what they spend than visitors from the US.

As a customer of an Irish bank, if I use an ATM in Ireland there is a small fixed charge. This is true whether I use an ATM of my own bank, or of any other bank.

But if I go abroad and use an ATM, the charges are a lot heavier. There may be chunky fixed charge which would impact heavily on small withdrawals, and there may even be a charge expressed as a percentage of the withdrawal (which isn’t, obviously, a foreign exchange charge but might as well be). The charges will vary depending on which bank’s ATM you use in the foreign country.

The “justification” for these charges is that, within Ireland (or within France, or within Spain . . .) the banks will all be members of a common clearing system, and can reconcile all their payments to one another’s customers fairly simply and quickly. But when I draw money from an ATM belonging to (say) Banco Santander, and Banco Santander wishes to debit my account with (say) the Ulster Bank, there is no clearing system to which they both belong and the cost of processing the transaction is greatly increased as a result.

(A suspicious person might think that it had something to do with the banks having lost the money they used to make on foreign exchange business, and wishing to make it up somewhere else. But it would be uncharitable to suggest that, so I won’t.)

22

I got my hands on the first foreign euro coins only 3 or 4 days after the 1/1. I was very surprised they found their way to my pocket so quickly.

The number of foreign coins then seemed to stagnate but recently(the last month or so) it seemed it suddenly rose (more tourists since the summer is coming and less people collecting foreign coins, I suppose). I now quite commonly notice foreign coins in my change. But the pattern is somewhat weird :

The most common coins (I live in Paris) are by far Belgian and Spanish, followed by Dutch, then Italian. I very seldom notice a german coin (2 or 3 in nearly 6 months), which surprises me a lot. I’ve seen only coin from Luxembourg, Portugal and Ireland. I’ve noticed no coin from Austria, Greece and Finland (which isn’t very surprising).

It seems there are very few foreign coins in the little change. Foreign 1 € or 2€ coins are quite common, foreign 1 cent or 2 cents coins basically non existing.

I would guessestimate that about 1 coin out 20 or 30 is currently foreign (probably half of them Spanish and Belgian). I suppose this ration will rise during and after the summer, due to tourism.

Checking my pocket, I found 13 coins, all french, except a spanish one.

As for the Irish tourism industry : The countries receiving the most foreign visitors have been for several years : France, then the US, then Italy and Spain (not sure of the order for Spain and Italy). So, at best, Ireland has the 4th tourism industry in the Eurozone.

However, the ratio number of visitors/local population would seem more relevant to estimate how common foreign coins should be. Given the low population of Ireland, it could be that this ratio is higher.

On the other hand, Ireland is an island, hence no coins can enter the country by merely swithching hands on the border towns and villages. I assume that for instance in major french towns situated close to the boundaries, like Lille or Strasbourg, a lot of foreign coins are brought in by people shopping, or filling their tanks in a cheaper gas station on the other side, or working in the other country. So, I suspect that isolated countries like Ireland, Greece and Finland will see less foreigns coins than other EU countries (as long as the UK doesn’t join in, that is).
I also remember having seen a site, in january, which gave estimate of the %age of foreign coins which will be circulating ultimately in each country. I vaguely remember this %age had been calculated for some reason by the EU, but since I don’t remember the site adress, it doesn’t help a lot. The only thing I clearly remember is that some countries (in the Benelux) were expected to ultimately have more foreign than local coins circulating.

23

I think the correct position is that you don’t see many Scottish notes in England because they aren’t legal tender and the Bank of England notes are legal tender, so traders prefer them. In Scotland, where there are no legal tender notes, Scottish and English notes are equally acceptable.

24

UDS - Well, I think the correct position is that you don’t see many Scottish fivers in London because people use cash points/ATM’s as they need. But YMMV and as this is not IMHO, lets leave it there.

Also, from your figures it looks like just over 1/4 of Irish tourist revenue derives from Eurolanders. The industry might be big, relative to the population, but if the number of Euroland visitors and/or their spending exceeds, relatively speaking, those to France, Spain and possibly Greece and Italy, I’d be surprised.

London-went to Ibiza in the 80’s, before he got old-Calling

25

I think the point being made by UDS is that the tourist influx to Ireland has a very high ratio to our population. Over six million visitors is lot in relation to a population of under four million. About a quarter of those visitors are from Euroland, so you would expect to see a lot of foreign euros circulating, as they empty their pockets.

No one has clearly explained why I saw very many foreign euro coins from January to March, but very few in April and May.

My partner also tells me that she has not seen any for a couple of weeks. She claims they are not made as robustly as our ones, and melt if you spill Irish whiskey on them. At least that was her excuse for coming home broke from the pub last night.

26

I’m old enough to remember London before ATMs, and you didn’t see many Scottish or Irish notes then either.

I suspect the ATMs are a bit of a red herring. The point is that once a Scottish or Irish note is deposited in a bank in England, it is effectively withdrawn from circulation in England. The bank does not reissue it, either over the counter or through an ATM, and (presumably) it is sent to Scotland and reissued there.

Why do banks not reissue Scottish and Irish notes? Because ther are legal tender notes available and (presumably) customers prefer them.

As far as tourist revenues go, Balor is right. What matters is not the absolute number of tourists who bring in coin from other eurozone countries, but the amount of that coin in proportion to the amount of Irish coin already in circulation. Hence it is the relative figures which are relevant, not the absolute figures.

But, as I pointed out in my earlier post, probably more coin is brought in by Irish residents returning from visits to other eurozone countries than by foreign visitors. And, again, what matters here is the amount of that coin relative to the amount of coin already in circulation, not the absolute amount.

I share the impression that, while I saw a few foreign euro coins early on, I have seen almost none lately. My own theory is that they are being hoarded by twelve-year-old boys who are trying to assemble a complete collection of all the euro coins from all the eurozone countries. Once they have completed their collections the proportion of foreign coin in circulation in Ireland should rise again. If my theory is correct, the easiest coins to get will be the ones from countries where Irish people tend to go - Spain, Portugal, Italy - and these should be the first coins to start appearing in change again. But it will be years before every twelve-year-old has got coins from Monaco, the Vatican, San Marino or Finland, so don’t expect to see too many of them for a while.

27

FtG’s Irish-Euro Variation Theory, Mark I:

While mints have a pretty good handle on how many coins to make each month, with the introduction of a new currency the Math is a lot more complicated. The precentages of coins in circulation vs. number sitting in penny jars, etc. must be hard to determine. Perhaps the Irish mint undercalculated. When they saw a lot of non-Irish Euros showing up they realized they needed to mint more, etc.

28

This would make sense, ftg, if the coins hadn’t been minted two years before Euro-day. However, you might be right re. release rate, though I think it’s a simple bank-give-out-coins-on-demand model.

BTW, where’s/what’s the PNW?

29

Bank notes issued by the bank of England are legal tender in Northern Ireland, a bank over here (i forget which) no longer issues its own notes from its ATMs in preference for BoE notes. But I’m informed that the reverse is not true (my Dad works in a bank so I’m guessing he knows.) A friend of my father was robbed while visiting England but found his wallet, still full of money, lying nearby. The thief had left it because the notes were all Ulster Bank notes and of no use to him.
To the OP, I live in NI cross border from a busy Irish town, Lifford, that seems to do a lot of tourist trade. Since we buy all our petrol and Lotto tickets there I thought we’d get a lot of “foreign” Euros but so far none. I always assumed that tourists would bring in larger denomination notes and get all their small change back in “Irish” Euros so there would be less foreign money in circulation. Either that or withdraw money at Irish ATMs and keep Irish Euros in circulation.

30

No, they’re not. It says so on the Bank of England website. They circulate freely in Northern Ireland and Scotland and they are commonly accepted, but they are not legal tender; nobody is obliged to accept them.

31

So would this mean they can be refused by a cashier in a shop for example? I didn’t know that, I thought that the distribution of the BoE notes by an Irish bank form its ATM in preference to producing their own like the other banks in NI would have indicated otherwise.

32

Here’s what it says, Pushkin:

(their emphasis). I take this to indicate that NI ATMs, if they do issue Bank of England notes, are issuing something that’s pragmatically acceptable, even if it isn’t legally binding.

33

This is scary. Something is clearly going on.

When I raised this query first, I had seen no foreign euro coins for over a month. Nor had my partner. Nor had my co-workers.

Suddenly, after I asked the question, I have begun to see them every day. My change is full of them. Shopkeepers thrust them at me from every angle. People in pubs show them to me. I find them on the street.

This is ridiculous over-kill. It is impossible that they have gone from being nowhere to being everywhere in one week. The probabilities are far too low. Clearly ::fnord:: it is a conspiracy by the Illuminati.

34

The Illuminati? Amateurs. The Illuminati are just a front for… Them.