In article , (Roland
Perry) wrote:

In message , at
17:40:44 on Wed, 18 Jun 2008, Nobody remarked:
exchanging the US quarters for Green Back paper.

Any bank I approached, refused to accept the large numbers of coins as
I wasn't/we weren't a customer.

15 years ago I was given $100 bills by a clueless Bureau de Change,
and I couldn't find a bank in a large US city that would change
them, even when I enlisted the support of one of their customers!
As a result I now never accept notes larger than $20.

Try the same trick with £50 notes here these days!

--
Colin Rosenstiel

On Thu, 19 Jun 2008 05:42:31 GMT, (Neil
Williams) wrote:


It's a slightly odd scheme - instead of just pricing everything to the
nearest 5 cents, items are still priced with the ubiquitous .99 etc
but the overall total is rounded off.

That is fast becoming the norm in Spain, too. It was universal in
Peseta days to round to the nearest 5 pesetas.

--
Bill Hayles
http://www.rossrail.com

"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message , at 17:40:44 on
Wed, 18 Jun 2008, Nobody remarked:
exchanging the US quarters for Green Back paper.

Any bank I approached, refused to accept the large numbers of coins as
I wasn't/we weren't a customer.

15 years ago I was given $100 bills by a clueless Bureau de Change, and I
couldn't find a bank in a large US city that would change them, even when
I enlisted the support of one of their customers! As a result I now never
accept notes larger than $20.
--
Roland Perry

And two out of every three US $100 bills are held outside the US :-)

On 19 Jun, 16:46, "Tim Roll-Pickering"
wrote:
MIG wrote:
Staff were told that we could still accept ½p coins from customers,
but only in pairs. *This was strongly emphasised and always struck me
as bizarre.

It sounds like a customer friendly move - "We still accept your out-of-date
coins" - as well as an way of ensuring people suddenly have, for want of a
better term, credit that can only be used there.

Yes indeed, but the emphasis on pairs implied something significant
when it was neither likely that someone could offer a single ½p nor
that it would matter much if they did.


Presumably Sainsburys had an arrangement whereby it could cash in all
its ½p coins by some deadline, but even if staff accepted them not in
pairs, the entire Sainsburys chain could only ever have been stuck
with one odd ½p if they ended up with an odd number overall.

Well when would anyone have reason to pay a sum ending in ½p? And how could
the store convert or give that back in change?

Presumably if they offered the correct price for some stilton
calculated to the nearest ½p and the staff forgot to round it down.
Maybe the pairs instruction was a way of making sure that staff had to
round down.


I also wonder what happened to anyone's bank balance that ended in ½p.

If half the population's accounts ended in ½p that could be a bit of
extra/loss of money for the banks (about £200 000 between the UK
banks?), whichever way it was rounded, but I bet that hardly anyone
either paid or deposited amounts ending in ½p in banks for a long time
before that. Interest resulting in fractions of p would work as it
does now.

(Neil Williams) writes:
On Wed, 18 Jun 2008 22:20:05 +0100, Steve Fitzgerald
] wrote:

Are they allowed to do that when they are valid elsewhere in the EU?

You might be able to pay with them if you happen to have them. But I
think it's an agreed scheme (which any retailer can do provided a debt
does not occur before payment).

I don't know about the Netherlands, but in Finland it's quite simply
the law. Those pieces of scrap metal (their nominal value is close to
a typical bank's handling fee per coin for a retailer so for them they
are essentially worthless, and there is usually nowhere to put them in
a cash register anyway) are still legal tender but using them doesn't
change the amount payable, so they must be used in multiples of 5 cent.
Only payments in actual cash may (and must, unless otherwise agreed)
be rounded.

wrote in message
...
"Peter Masson" wrote in message
...

"Stephen Allcroft" wrote

Neither dependent nor colonised but we in Scotland still have pound
notes (issued by private banks).

Only the Royal Bank of Scotland still issues one pound notes, though all
three Scottish banks issue GBP100 notes, which is more than the Bank of
England does. The Scottish banks have to have their banknotes backed by
Bank
of England notes, and for this purpose the Bank of England has issued
notes
for GBP1 million and GBP100 million.
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/bankn...ther_notes.htm

???

The highest denomination banknote that I have ever seen issued was for
$100,000, bearing the portrait of late US president Woodrow Wilson.

But that was actually for a substantial amount. I am not counting
banknotes from Yugoslavia, for example, which had a 1 billion-dinar note,
due because of hyper inflation.

Speaking of the BoE's Website, is there a tentative schedule for when
other F series banknotes are to be introduced? I also seem to recall that
there are coins with completely different reverses for all denominations
starting from this year.

Speaking of hyper-inflation, it's fun looking at the website of the Reserve
Bank of Zimbabwe http://www.rbz.co.zw to see the daily exchange rate of the
$Z vs the $US. Yesterday, it was 5,817,000,000; today it's 6,718,000,000.
They have just issued $Z 50,000,000,000 notes ("bearer cheques"). And it
will cost you $Z 1,800,000,000 to mail a postcard to the US.
http://www.zimpost.co.zw/postalrates.html

ObTransit - I saw a Youtube video showing buses in Zimbabwe - they come
rarely, and then only when they can get fuel.

hb.

In message , at 10:55:40 on Thu, 19 Jun 2008, Dik T.
Winter remarked:
On another note, though, I would like to see the abolition of the 1p
and 2p coins as the Dutch have done with the 1 and 2 euro-cent coins.
There is hardly a need for them these days.

Are they allowed to do that when they are valid elsewhere in the EU?

The 1 and 2 cent coins are accepted but that is just about all. Moreover,
when paying in cash the total amount to pay is rounded to the nearest
multiple of 5 cent (which is allowed *), so you will never receive 1 and
2 cent coins.

Half an hour ago a Dutch bureau de change gave me a 97 cents, rather
than the 96 cents they calculated they owed me. The change included one
each of 2c and 5c.

So it seems the Dutch have not abolished the 2c after all.

If they'd have wanted to round it up to a Euro (and save counting small
coins at all) that would have been fine by me.
--
Roland Perry

"Mark Brader" wrote in message
...

Neither were the $100,000 US ones. The largest US denomination for
general circulation is the $10,000, last issued around 1944 (but still
valid if you have any, as the US does not demonetize old issues).
The highest denomination still printed in the US dropped again around
1969 from $1,000 to $100, and Canada copied that move in about 2000,
in both cases on the grounds that criminals would be inconvenienced
and most other people would not.

It seems that people and businesses feel a bit uneasy about the 500-euro
note, as if it has some sort of stigma attached to it.

ObRail: a few years ago in Switzerland I had the pleasure of buying
a train ticket that cost something like 130 francs and paying for it
by inserting cash into the ticket machine *including a 100-franc note,
worth over 40 pounds*. The 200-franc denomination was in common use
as well, and I daresay the machine would have accepted that too if my
ticket had been expensive enough.

I notice that in Amsterdam, GVB does not accept 50-euro notes.

MIG wrote:

I also wonder what happened to anyone's bank balance that ended in ½p.

If half the population's accounts ended in ½p that could be a bit of
extra/loss of money for the banks (about £200 000 between the UK
banks?), whichever way it was rounded, but I bet that hardly anyone
either paid or deposited amounts ending in ½p in banks for a long time
before that.

I'd disagree - a lot of people often put some of their loose change in when
depositing cheques, at least whilst the banks still allow such deposits. The
chances of a spare ½p ending up would have been quite strong.

"Bill Hayles" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 19 Jun 2008 05:42:31 GMT, (Neil
Williams) wrote:


It's a slightly odd scheme - instead of just pricing everything to the
nearest 5 cents, items are still priced with the ubiquitous .99 etc
but the overall total is rounded off.

That is fast becoming the norm in Spain, too. It was universal in
Peseta days to round to the nearest 5 pesetas.


Hasn't Finland eliminated the 1- and 2-pennia coins?