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Posted 11 months ago
Militarist
(96 items)
My wife and I took a short Canadian Vacation during the last week in June. Now a days everyone is thinking “green’ and it has also rubbed off on me. Being a numismatist I know that it costs a fair amount of money for any country to produce coinage. I also know how many Canadian coins show up in change around here. Years ago as a youngster filling in my Whitman Coin Folders I put together some very good Canadian coin sets, mostly cents and nickels just from circulation finds. I also know that banks can not exchange foreign coins like currency so they are stuck with lots of coins. Therefore I went to the local bank and offered to buy their Canadian coins at full face value in US money. If you ever want to see a banker smile that will do it. I also went to the local coin dealer and made him the same offer. He was another happy camper and sold me coins plus some old very worn one and two dollar Canadian currency notes with the warning that the notes may no longer be redeemable. All in all I bought almost 350.00 worth of Canadian coins and currency which saved me about 30.00 based on the exchange rate difference and service fees that we would have been charged if we simply had exchanged currency at a bank. Since we drove, the weight of the coins was not a problem and we did not have to worry about going through electronic security. After we got into Canada the first thing on my list was to find a bank where I could convert my coins into paper. All of the Canadians we ran into were very polite and friendly especially in Sault St. Marie where we ended up in a small branch of the Scotia Bank. They were delighted when they saw the old banknotes and I suspect we may have witnessed the birth of some new collectors. The coins got a different reaction. Yes they could accept the coins but since they did not have a coin counting machine we would have to roll the coins in the paper wrappers which they gave us with a smile. So at a closed teller window my wife and I got rolling. The teller noticed that we had some old looking coins and with a concerned look asked if any of the coins were silver. I just smiled and told her no. Since most Canadian coins are magnetic it was easy to check the nonmagnetic ones to see if they were silver and sadly only one of those coins was. Needless to say that silver dime stayed home. The Canadian currency is really neat especially the fifty dollar and up denominations. They include reflective laser images and see through sections plus denominations in Braille. The notes themselves are made of some type of plastic and a bank teller told me that the notes are virtually indestructible and cannot be torn. Much to my surprise the notes are not too slippery and are easy to count unlike new U.S. notes that tend to stick together making it easy to miscount.
World CoinsSince ancient times, governments have produced coins to establish a predict…
With Mexican coins and currency make sure all the coins and currency are dated 1992 or later which was their last currency reform. If you have some Mexican friends they can probably sort them out for you in a flash. If you go to Mexico good luck, you are a braver man than I.
Jason, most Americans aren't aware of this, but the U.S. can't change it's currency and declare old currency invalid after an amnesty period. There is so much "black money" out there that if it were brought in for exchange, even with a lot of people going to prison, it would bankrupt the country. In the '80's the U.S. gov't estimated that 85-87% of the cash money was hidden(black money). Devaluation of the dollar every year is bad enough without it suddenly dropping to 13-15% of it's purchasing value. This factour is a crisis that is ignored. This, by the way, comes from somebody in the State of State I have talked with about it.
I can see were that would kill (even if only temporarily) the drug trade but how would that bankrupt the country? After all they would only be trading paper for paper which the government can print at cost.
That money has not been in circulation. The attitude of the gov't is that if not seen, it doesn't exist & has been printing more money on the premise. Dump it on the economy & see what happens. The gov't has wanted to change the currency for decades but waited too late.