Who do you spend? (other then US)

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)
#1

After reading this thread http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=212023, where all the presidents on each of the notes were explained. I ,who or what or why, was on other countries money.

NZ changed to the new sparkly polymer note (so good you can wash it twice and tumble dry it and it is still as good as new) in 1999. It is splendid stuff, ultra hard to destroy and brightly coloured so there is no chance of thinking a $5 is a $100 (ok yes it was always brightly coloured.) Oh and it’s environmentaly friendly should you chose to throw it away.

My question is inspired by the posters thorough explanation of the president featured on each note…oh and the realisation that we have no leaders-of-the-country on our notes (damn our forgettable politicians)

Our money does not display presidents…that’s easy we don’t have presidents. We display who is important to our nation. I sometimes think it is an odd choice. Here they are and the reasons.

$1 and $2 dollar notes were discontinued. The coins both feature the Queen on one side. The $1 has the Kiwi and the $2 has the white heron.
The notes always (bear in mind the person is never alone, always featured with a landmark or some other “kiwi” thing and the reverse always has a bird and some flora) show the Queen as the water mark…very fetching in a lil clear window.

$5 …Sir Edmund Hilary. First up Mount Everest. In 1953. He is featured with a mountain and some plants. The note is a lovely shade of reddish/brownish/orangeish. I spend Sir Ed often…to quote him, I knock the bastard off.

$10…Kate Sheppard, a prominent campaigner for the womens vote. New Zealand was the first country in the world to give women the vote, in 1893. Kate is remembered, along with some birds and some plants, in a lovely shade of blue. Like most women she is your functional type, I receive Kate as change and I respect her usefulness.

$20…The queen, well we always had her why stop now? On her back is a feirce looking karearea/falcon. The Queen is resplendid in green. I spend her when she pops out of the ATM. The ATM only stocks her. I spend her often.

$50…Sir Apirana Ngata (1874-1950). The first Maori to graduate from a New Zealand university. He was an M.P for 38 years. He helped revive the Maori culture. He looks gorgeous in purple. Though he is my favourite colour Sir Apriana and I don’t catch up that often.

$100…Ernest, Lord Rutherford of Nelson (1871-1937)
I am quoting this bit (from the NZ govt. I don’t do scientific explanations). Internationally recognised as the `father of the atom’, Ernest Rutherford changed the basic understanding of atomic science on three occasions: he explained the perplexing problem of naturally occurring radioactivity, determined the structure of the atom, and changed one element into another.
Ernest looks darling in red. Atoms are everywhere but Ernest is harder to catch hold of…I would spend him often if I saw him in my purse.

So that is who I spend when I go shopping (ok!.. I rarely spend Sir Rutherford or Sir Ngata) Who do you spend and why are they there?

#2

Hong Kong dollar notes don’t have any leaders or political figures on them either.

For each denomination ($10, $20, $50, $100, $500, $1000) there are three types of notes in circulation, issued by the three major banks: HSBC (Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation), Standard Chartered Bank and the Bank of China. So the displays on the notes correspond to the bank that issued them. Each denomination, of couse, has its own, rather distinct colour.

10 - green
20 - greyish/teal blue
50 - purple
100 - red
500 - brown
1000 - orange

The displays aren’t all that interesting. There’s an image of that particular bank building and their logo. HSBC notes also have an image of their traditional lion statues, which are located in front of the HSBC building.

The notes are essentially the same since pre-1997. The coins, however, are different. The old coins had a picture of the queen on them (and these coins are still in circulation), whilst the new ones have a boring bahuinia (sp?) flower logo on them (similar to the HK flag).

#3

Euro notes: nobody. Just a different bridge on each note.

Euro coins: each country mints their own. The designs are often just symbolic, but some of the countries that issue them use monarchs, mythological, or historical figures - so sometimes I might spend:[ul][li]Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.[/li][li]King Albert of Belgium.[/li][li]Mozart or Bertha von Suttner (if I ever get any Austrian coins in my change).[/li][li]I certainly have already spent Dante, the Vitruvian Man, Marcus Aurelius, Umberto Boccioni, or Venus, all minted in Italy.[/li][li]Greece: Europa on a Bull, Eleftherios Veizelos, Ioannis Capodistrias, Rigas-Fereos [/li][li]France: some of them have Marianne, and some have a generic female figure who might just be Marianne too…[/li][li]Luxembourg: His Royal Highness the Grand Duke Henri.[/li][li]Spain: King Juan Carlos, and Cervantes (looking suspiciously like Shakespeare).[/li][li]The Pope, since the Vatican now issues euros.[/li]Prince Rainier and his sons, since Monaco is issuing them too.[/ul]All info from here.

#4

Indian here and for a change all Indian notes have Mahatma Gandhi on the front.It wasnt always like this but something like 10 years ago the govermnent decided that more respect was needed for the father of the nation and voila everything was Gandhi.Although in different colors and sizes.
Rs.5 in Green
Rs.10 in Brown/Rust
Rs.20 in Pink
Rs.50 in Purple
Rs.100 in a very elegant Blue
Rs.500 in Green
Rs.1000- Sorry dont remember.Dont have one around and never got lots of chance to use or spend one :frowning:
I must add that the reverse sides of all the notes are different.Rs 10 notes having animals,Rs.100 having the Himalaya mountain ranges etc.
We also have Re.1 and Rs.2 notes but they are hardly in circulation.

#5

Also may I add that the OP was very elegantly written.Good one calm kiwi

#6

When is a Canuck going to drop by and tell us about the loon?

#7

Well, here’s the lowdown on the people who grace Australia’s polymer banknotes.

Nearly all the notes have two people–one on each side. There are 6 women and 5 men represented.

They include monarchs (QEII), politicians, social reformers, convicts, sopranos, writers, reverends, and soldiers.

#8

The $5 note featuring Queenie and Parliament House goes practically unseen in recent years. The new fiver featuring Sir Henry Parkes and Catherine Spence has effectively replaced it in circulation.

Incidentally, the $5 note featuring Queen Lizzie has an interesting history:

– when it first came out (in the mid 90s?) the Queen’s face could be rubbed off if you vigorously scrubbed it with your thumb. This was shortly fixed.

– juvenile minds shortly discovered that you can fold the note around the area depicting the Queen’s jaw and neck to make what appears to be a, uhh, hairless vulva.

– the note originally featured grey tones, but over a short period (in the late 90s?) they all become pink/purple! (Leading to speculation that someone at the RBA carelessly washed them with the red $20 notes and the colours ran – like with a white pair of undies and a red shirt.)

– the fiver is the same height as all Australian banknotes, but it’s slightly shorter than $10 notes, which in turn in shorter than the $20, etc.

That’s all I can think of for now.

#9

The last series of bills on this page shows Mexico’s current moolah.

$10.00 - Emiliano Zapata (Mexican Revolution). This bill is legal tender but rarely used any more.

$20.00 - Benito Juárez (president during the mid 1800s Civil Wars). A new, plastic polymer 20 peso bill was recently introduced with pretty much the same graphic elements as the bill shown.

$50.00 - José María Morelos (Mexican War of Independence).

$100.00 - Nezahualcóyotl (idealized prehispanic king).

$200.00 - Sor Juana de Asbaje (Jeromite nun and author in colonial Mexico).

$500.00 - Ignacio Zaragoza (hero of the Battle of Puebla–Cinco de Mayo).

Coins generally don’t have portraits any more, except for a commemorative 20 peso coin depicting Octavio Paz.

#10

Alright Zenster here we go…

Coins and on up from Canada have on them:
(Note: All coins have Queen Elizabeth II on the face side)

1¢ have a maple leaf on it (I apparently have one of the Centennial Pennies with a rock dove in flight on it tucked away. Cool)

5¢ have a beaver sitting on top of it’s lodge.

10¢ have the Bluenose (a ship from our history in Nova Scotia. Built in Canada she never lost a race.)

25¢ have a caribou head on them though you can still find the occasional ‘Mountie quarter’ in circulation (which was made for the RCMP centennial in 1973)

50¢ coins are no longer in circulation as a regular coin. They do still pop up though and are completely legal tender, though people who do have them don’t usually spend them. It bears the Coat of Arms of Canada and the inscription ‘A Mari usque ad Mare’ meaning ‘from sea to sea’. I have one minted as recently as 1996 gotten as change from someone at K-days.

$1 coins aka ‘loonies’ depict a loon in water. It was introduced in 1987 to replace the dollar bank notes.

$2 coins aka ‘twonies’ (named suck mainly because they are two dollars and we tried to play on loonie) depict a polar bear on an ice flow. Introduced in 1996 to replace the $2 bill it is a bi-colored coin with the outside rim being nickel and the inside aluminum bronze.

$1 bills, no longer in circulation but they displayed Queen Elizabeth II on the front and a view of Parliament Hill across the Ottawa River on the back. They are green with a multicoloured tint.

$2 bills in a terra cotta colour displays Queen Elizabeth as well and American Robins on the back. (Also no longer in circulation)

$5 bills are blue with Sir Wilford Laurier on one side and the other has children playing hockey outdoors with an exerpt from The Hockey Sweater

$10 bills are mostly purple with some other colours (okay here’s a picture) On one side there is Sir John A MacDonald and the back has a theme of remembrance and peace with an exerpt of In Flanders Fields and images of children standing with a veteran at what (I think) is a memorial in Ottawa.

$20 bills are green and have Queen Elizabeth II and loons on the other side.

$25 bills… (Not kidding look here!) are not in circulation…

$50 bills display William Lyon Mackenzie King on one side a snowy owl on the other.

$100 bills have Sir Robert Borden and a Canada goose on the back

$500 bills are worth lots of money if you find even a beat up one with 46 left unaccounted for. Has Sir John A MacDonald as well and a Fertility Allegory on the back (whatever that means…)

$1000 bills are no longer in circulation due to counterfeiting and have Queen Elizabeth II on one side, a landscape with a Pine Grosbeak on the back.

Million Dollar notes or even 10 Million Dollar notes… well look here
Hey I didn’t know we had a currency museum! nd apparently at one time playing cards were used as cash in Canada! Nifty…

More detailed coin information found at the Royal Canadian Mint More detailed information on paper money found at Canadian Paper Money (click on denomination on the left for the info)

Alright alright I’ll stop now. You people are probably yawning away… lol… I got so interested in looking at this stuff I forgot it might bore people. What was the original question btw?

#11

Norwegian coins and bank notes.

The smallest coin is 50 øre. It’s copper-colored and features a crown on the heads side and a stylized animal from Viking-era and medieval carvings on the reverse.

The 1 and 5 krone coins have holes in them. The 1 has the King’s monogram on the front; the 5 has a representation of the ceremonial chain the King wears around his neck and shoulders. Both have rose-painting inspired motifs on the reverse.

The 10 and 20 have King Harald V in profile on the front. The reverse of the 10 is a detail from the roof of a stave church. Many commemorative 20s have been minted, but the standard reverse is the prow of a Viking ship.

The 50-krone bank note features Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, one of two men who collected Norwegian fairy tales (much like the Grimm brothers did in Germany).

The 100-krone note shows opera singer Kristin Flagstad.

Kristian Birkeland, a Norwegian physicist who discovered the connection between Earth’s magentosphere and the Northern Lights, gets the gorgeous 200-krone note.

The richly detailed 500-krone note features one of my favorite authors, Sigrid Undset.

And not that I see many of them these days, but the 1000-krone note shows Edward Munch against a background of some of his less depressing works.

#12

Had to look at the Riksbanken site to be sure I got everything right. There is a lot more to read there (in English too)

20 kronor
Author Selma Lagerlöf, who received the Nobel prize for Literature in 1909. On the backside there is a picture of a passage from her book Nils Holgersson’s Wonderful Journey Through Sweden, with Nils and Mårten goose flying.

50 kronor
Opera singer Jenny Lind and the old opera house in Stockholm. On the back there are various pictures of instruments.

100 kronor
The main motif is a portrait of the naturalist Carl von Linné who created the system for classifying plants and animals into species. Together with some of his drawings of flowers. On the back there is a picture of a bee pollinating a flower.

500 kronor
A portrait of King Charles XI from 1682. On the back we have Christopher Polhem, the father of Swedish engineering who was active during the reign of Charles XI.

1000 kronor
A portrait of King Gustav Vasa (1496-1560). On the back there is a picture of people harvesting grain.

#13

Thanks for that info mhendo - on a recent visit to Sydney, I asked a couple of blokes in a bar who the people on the $5 and $20 (what I happened to have) - the best anyone could come up with was that the thought the guy on the $20 was “a poet or something”. Sir Henry Parkes gave me the creeps. I got rid of the 5s very quickly.

English money:

Queen on one side, of course.

£5 :Elizabeth Fry, prison reformer. Replacing the Duke of Wellington in the last year. Blue. Useful, cos I can use this on the bus without the drivers getting grumpy.

£10 Charles Darwin, replaced Charles Dickens 2 or 3 years ago. Brown. Spent in pubs, newsagents etc.

£20 Sir Edward Elgar. Replaced Sir Michael Faraday a while ago. Purplish. See him a lot, spent mostly in pubs and supermarkets.

£50 Sir John Houblon, first govenor of the Bank of England, apparently. Haven’t seen one of these for a good while - reddish, as I recall. These get spent only when making a cash deposit on a flat I’m going to rent or something like that.

Scotland - there are three banks each issuing their own notes. I can only remember those with Sir Walter Scott on them (Royal Bank of Scotland).

#14

Paging Mr Aro
Come and tell us about the Northern Ireland notes. Very interesting, they are.

And as for you NZers and Australians - polymer notes sound fantastic, we definitely should be copying you on that as our notes are in a diablolical state, the €5 are the most atrocious, shabby and ripped and grungy for the most part.

#15

Before the Euro we had the Punt in Ireland.

http://www.emeraldtiger.com/general/puntpics.htm

£5 A nun. I should know more about her but I think she was connected in some way to the Magdalen Laundries or at least the shitehole in Goldenbridge, Inchicore Dublin (http://observer.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4753265-102275,00.html)
£10 James Joyce. Writer and smut merchant :wink:

£20 Daniel O’Connell. Irish Catholic MP when Ireland was under British control. Was majorly involved in the movement to gain Catholic emancipation.

£50 Douglas Hyde. President of Ireland 1938-1945. Founder of the Gaelic League which was very involved in the revival of the Irish launguage and literature.

#16

Unfortunately, if you ask questions like that in an Australian bar, chances are that if the face in question does not belong to a famous spoortsman or notorious politician, you will draw a blank. It really is rather sad how little some of we Aussies know about the country’s history.

Then again, i’ve met people here in the United States who don’t know who Alexander Hamilton ($10 bill) is. Just goes to show that if you’re on the currency, and were not a president or Benjamin Franklin, people tend to draw a blank.

#17

Not quite true. While they are generally not put in circulation, AFAIK, they mint them every year. IIRC, all my yearly coin sets include a 50c piece. I have several (4 or 5) uncirculated rolls of 2002 vintage 50 cent pieces as well.

But you are correct, you generally don’t see them in circulation. Sometimes if I want to confuse the poor checkout girl at Wal-Mart I’ll use one. :slight_smile:

There was a thread earlier about a movement for Canadian SDMB’s to resurrect the 50c piece. I guess it fizzled :frowning:

#18

A Kiwi friend, who had bought cash just before his first trip to the US, complained about the size of the bills… he said it looked like Monopoly money. I told him it was the other way around.

He also mentioned how the NZ polymer notes are more durable than the “old-fashioned” paper notes issued in the US. I told him that Americans probably wouldn’t like to buy petroleum with money made from petroleum by-products when they can buy it with money made from plant fiber. I mean, there’s “durable” and there’s “strong”.

Here in Japan, the paper notes do not carry the image of the Emperor, but of figures of cultural significance.

Fukuzawa Yukichi, 1841 – 1909, (portrayed on the 10,000 yen note) a leader of the Meiji Enlightenment, made the first Japanese translation of the US Declaration of Independence in 1866.

Nitobe Inazo, 1862 – 1933, (portrayed on the 5,000 yen note) was a philosopher and an agriculturist who devoted himself to the peace as a Deputy Directer of the “League of Nations”. He is also the author of Bushido - The Soul of Japan, which he wrote in English.

Natsume Soseki, 1867 – 1916, (portrayed on the 1,000 yen note) one of the great novelists from Japan’s early modern era.

#19

That’s why I said they are still spendable! I know they are minted each year (why I have a coin from 1996) they just don’t get circulated as a general rule.

I used to get them every so often at Tim Horton’s as people paid for their coffee. Didn’t confuse me though I took a good look at them. Sometimes I’d get coins that were 5 whatever the coins are called that looked like dimes but a closer look showed they weren’t even from Canada or the States!

#20

Yojimbo, more than you ever wanted to know about Catherine McAuley, the nun on the old 5 euro note.

http://www.sistersofmercy.org/qanda/history.html

She founded the Sisters of Mercy order, but only had 10 years in religious life and died in 1841,so in fairness I don’t think she can really be blamed too much for Goldenbridge or the Magdalene laundries.