387
TIL Ecuador doesn't have its own currency and uses US dollars, but maybe not the same US dollars you are used to seeing.
(lemmy.world)
this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2024
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These aren’t rare or unseen. All legal US money
These aren’t rare in the sense that everybody has one they keep as a collectible. If I went down to 7/11 and tried to buy something with it they’d give me a funny look.
no they wouldnt. its money. i work at a gas station we get these all the time
I have a friend who works at a bank, and when he was a teller there was a guy who would come in every friday and exchange 500 in dollar coins of varying types, the little brass colored ones here, the silver looking ones, and also 50 cent pieces.
They didn't carry that much at any time because nobody really brings them in so they had to start special ordering them for this one guy. Every week.
No idea what he uses them for, but either he's got a shitload of them, or he makes it hail at strip clubs.
Let's say you want to buy a computer. You could, like a boring person, go to Best Buy and purchase a computer for 800 bucks on a credit card. Or you could dress up like a pirate with 800 gold doubloons in a sack, and slam that shit on the counter during checkout.
At today's gold prices, 800 US dollars is just one single small gold coin. A classic 1 oz Krugerrand coin is currently worth more than 2,000 US dollars.
He was referring to using the sack of dollar coins as if they were gold doubloons, not actual gold coins.
Likely owns a vending machine business. They're easier to return than a handful of quarters if someone uses a 5 dollar bill to buy something for a buck and change.
I'd put money on it being one of those "Twice the Ice" vending machines, all of my dollar coins come from either that or the ticket thing at the train station.
My guess is that he runs something that needs to give automated change. Vending machines, car washes, arcades, etc… Basically, if someone puts a $20 into the car wash but only wants a $10 wash, it’s easy to just dispense ten $1 coins as change.
Coin handlers are mechanically very easy. Coins don’t vary in size and shape, so it’s easy to automatically detect which coins have been inserted, dispense change, and reject coins that don’t match. Paper money sorters are much more complicated, and more prone to failure.
50 cent coins contained silver for a few years longer than dimes and quarters. So you have a slightly better chance of finding a silver coin worth a few dollars in a roll of halves. It's free gambling for numismatists.
Source: I ask for the occasional roll of halves.
My grandfather used to do this with nickels, dimes, quarters, and dollar pieces. When he passed I got the "random coins" that were literally all years prior to the change in materials.
No idea how much it's all worth but it's in the back of a closet somewhere.
I guess this didn't occur to me because the guy also got the regular brass ones, which don't have any value above face value to my knowledge. They didn't contain actual gold at any point.
I would have thought people would have collected/sold the silver ones out of circulation by now.
It would be cool to make a mural with them
fwiw I've personally had cashiers refuse to accept them since they didn't think they were real. not sure how common that is tho, especially now
I don't know,.clerks have called the cops over $2 paper bills.
The vending machine at my job gives change in dollar coins, and the Ohio turnpike does the same. They are fairly common, just people dont like to handle change is all.
I recall in NYC for a while, dollar coins were known as metrocard change from when they first started installing the Metrocard Vending Machines.
Thank you; I didn’t know that. You do have a rather big country and I still sort of wonder if it is universally recognized. Again, just going by never having seen them in movies. Maybe United Statesians aren’t just fictional characters in movies. We’ll never know.
yeah we still mostly use dollar bills but we do have dollar coins and have had dollar coins in circulation for a long while predating these versions even.
It’s so cool to me. I wonder if I am the only one not from US who finds this a bit mind blowing. What other secrets are you keeping?
We also have a two dollar bill that is rarely seen. So rare in fact that I’ve read stories of cashiers calling the cops on someone because they don’t even realize it’s legal tender.
In Portland Oregon (most strip clubs per capita in the country) it is traditional to use $2 bills instead of singles. It is extremely common to see two dollar bills in Oregon, I would bet a majority of two's in circulation stay in the PNW.
Here in Cambodia we have a dual currency system: you can pay in dollars or riel and get your change in a mixture of currencies.
The $2 note is seen in businesses, especially money changing ones (from dollar to riel or vice versa), on display as a good luck sign.
Lol... I've only ever seen the Sacajawea coin in the US.
i have a jackson one and a polk one floating around my backpack
Cool. They're still damn rare.
lol