The US lacks
large value coinage. Oh, they tried to make nearly quarter sized dollars but nobody used them. The Canajans dealt with this by no longer printing ones or twos. So you get a dollar coin (A looney, because it has a loon on the obverse) and a two dollar coin (called a tooney, because two dollars) (Don’t ask) The Japanese have a 1000 yen note in circulation (About $10.00) and most of the EU has a two euro coin.
So when I went to the store to buy smokes for the inlaws the other day I arrived with my wallet out thinking I would pay with plastic, and then realized I had almost thirty dolllars in coins in my pocket. It is certainly an odd feeling to carry that much money in metal.
14 comments Og | Uncategorized
Could make one walk lop sided.
that or make the pants ride lower on that side.
Would b e lethal to the saggy pants brigade, no doubt.
I often carry several hundred dollars worth of metal in my pocket.
Sometimes a .38, other times, a .380 ACP.
Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX
Can you make change for a .22?
$30 in metal… so that’ll buy one pack of smokes up in Canada, eh?
I’ve had the same experience when visiting Canada.
Once I went to get a can of soda out of a vending machine at the hotel, and was pained to notice that it did not have a dollar bill acceptor. I actually got all the way back to the room before it struck me why that was the case…
Ran across this when I was in Canada and it made sense after a while. If I remember correctly they don’t use pennies. Everything is rounded to the nearest nickle. That was not a problem either.
Funny thing is, the money supply is one of the few things that the government can totally control. The Treasury department, without any congressional laws being passed, can all by itself decide to withdraw paper $1 notes from circulation and replace them with coins. People could complain all they like and it wouldn’t matter. The $5 note would then be the smallest denomination of paper money. And they would save money doing it since coins offer a better return on investment for the government since they last 15 times longer than paper and only cost twice as much to make.
Og, it seems the U.S. Mint is hoarding all the .22 currency these days?
Harder to find than an honest politician.
Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX
Even the honest politicians are costing twice as much as last year.
Professor, you are correct, but remember that any time the government starts to talk about changing the money, the jBrch gene in a whole lot of people lights off and it’s a conspiracy — a conspiracy I tell you! — to withdraw all the old money from circulation to force redistribution of wealth…
I don’t know if I would truly miss the $1 bill. But the USA seems to want their greenbacks with George Washington on them. Maybe if the $1 coin had old George on the front?
So, how do I leave a two dollar tip for a two dollar cuppa joe at Joe’s?
and the ATMs around these parts now spit out $50 bills. I had never seen that until a month or so ago.