Sorting coins

[kate_schaefer]

I'm sorting my non-US coins prior to travel. The only non-US bills I have are Canadian. I am reminded how long it has been since I last went to Canada, which is not at all far away from where I live and in general a pretty pleasant place to visit.

For some reason the Canadian coins and the British coins are mixed together. Should be easy enough to sort out: if there's a moose, a beaver, a loon, a maple leaf, or an explorer, it's Canadian. Where did this kangaroo come from? I've never been to Australia.


There are a few euros in the pile as well, one odd Mexican coin, and couple old NYC subway tokens. In the end, we have a grand total of 39 pence saved from the last time we were in the UK.

Comments

[calimac]

Then you don't have any pound coins, which were replaced entirely by new pound coins a year or two ago. The old ones are no longer valid (counterfeiting issues).

The UK also deaccessions its bills from time to time, so good you don't have any of those to worry about either.

[kate_schaefer]

Thanks! Instead of feeling crushed that I don't have a supply of pounds left over from four years ago, I will feel chuffed that we were so clever at managing our currency, a cleverness we never have when we go to Canada. I wish we had a Darwin, though. I really liked those. I look forward to getting an Austen at some point.

Our Oyster cards still have small balances on them, and I found two more subway tokens and a parking token for a bankrupt parking company.

[calimac]

I came back from my last British trip with one 5-pound note and a little change. Very pleased, especially as I'd used only the money I'd got at foreign exchange before I left and hadn't had to go to a cashpoint (ATM) at all; but not so pleased as I was on my previous trip, when I found a bag of crisps at an airport gate-side shop that cost exactly the coins I had in my pocket.

From Canada I currently have a $5 note with Laurier on it, and a big wad of coins.

[kate_schaefer]

We still have an old 5-Spock in our Canadian supply. I don't suppose anyone is defacing currency that way these days.

[redbird]

Do you know if those are completely invalid, or "have to turn in for new currency at the bank" invalid? (The question is whether I should give mine to my mother, who lives in London, the next time I see her. If you don't know, I'll ask her.)

[calimac]

Withdrawn currency (here's the official list of the ones that have taken the high jump) can be exchanged. I had success taking just a couple notes and going into any old high-street bank. But they may not all do that, or they may have a limit on number of notes, and it may become tougher as the withdrawal date recedes further in the past. Alternate procedure, which they assure us is good permanently, is to bring or send them to the Bank of England itself, and here's the instructions for that, though I don't think it says whether foreigners may apply, what with the ID requirements and all.

(ETA: As I was writing, slipped my mind about your mother.)

[redbird]

I have some Australian coins that Alan Rosenthal gave me, as souvenirs; I'm not sure what cattitude and I did with the oddities like the 50-kopeck coin I found lying on the ground in Times Square and the odd bits of Caribbean coinage that occasionally turned up in my change. (I gave our leftover euros to Nina Horvath as a TAFF donation when she came to Seattle on her TAFF trip.)

[kate_schaefer]

I like having a few odd bits of coinage. We are charmed by the kangaroos and are likely to be charmed by them again when we next sort the contents of this jar in a few years.


The lions on the one ten pence coin we found are nice, too.

[lindadee]

I keep all my foreign coins. The British pound coins have different sides to them, depending on which bank originated them, so I tried to collect them all. I even have some paper pounds from the late 1960s.

Kate, keep those NYC tokens. I was at the Trolley Museum in San Francisco there other day (on my trip to Worldcon) and saw some on sale there.

[calimac]

The new pound coins, alas, lack the old ones' edge inscriptions.

[kate_schaefer]

It's a little weird to look at the tokens and realize that I acquired them when I routinely spent time in New York, forty-some years ago. It's been more than ten years since I was last there, and I know that in many ways it's not the same city I used to visit.

The tokens aren't usable on the subway any more; they're an odd remnant of how people used to pay, but they used to be as good as money. Better, if what you needed was to be able to pay your fare at an unattended station.