For a long time there was one of the old signs with miles and kilometers on I-75 here in Ohio, but I’m not sure it’s there any more.
No, we did have a gold Eagle coin up until 1933 when all gold coins were withdrawn from circulation.
I’ll give you two packets of Mee Goreng for a metro ticket 
Cash is strongly discouraged under covid rules and I think that is going to accelerate the decline.
2 Likes
Which is literally what the entire rest of the world does as well, bar one country.
5 Likes
3 Likes
I wish we’d get dollar and two-dollar coins in the U.S., and get rid of paper $1s. I’d also be in favor of losing the penny and rounding up or down, as some on this thread have experience with.
At least two, since Canada does it the same way too ($6.99 + tax, ugh)
The exchange rate was defined as sixpence = 5 cents, not 1 penny = 1 cent.
If you wanted to convert your pennies into cents at a bank, they only accepted multiples of sixpence. I seem to recall charity boxes at banks where you could drop off stray pennies short of sixpence, and the bank amalgamated those into multiples of sixpence, converted to decimal, and deposited them into the charity’s bank account.
Private businesses could accept old coins smaller than sixpence if they chose, on whatever basis they liked, but that’s just part of the general principle that business can choose to accept payment in whatever form they like. Pennies, cents, bitcoin, shark teeth, wombat droppings. (Not to be confused with the “Legal Tender” concept which relates to payment of an existing debt that is denominated in Australian currency, not to the negotiation of the sale of goods or services involving immediate payment.)
Of course one of the things that got pennies out of circulation extremely quickly was all the parents hoarding them in the hope that they’d become valuable as collectibles that would one day pay for the childrens’ weddings, education, house, etc.
I might dispute a couple of points. One is that, according to my recollection, there was a scale from 1 to 12 which rounded down the value of pence so that it met with the decimal coinage, and at least 2 penny values shared the same decimal coin value. At least, that is what happened at the start. What you describe sounds like the “mopping up” of pre-decimal coins that had been in circulation - prior to their status of “legal tender” being entirely removed. Anyways, if you hold onto coins long enough they all become valuable. Perhaps the ridiculous thing about the lovely one cent coin was that there were 100 of them in every dollar. It occurred to me that they would make a fine coin necklace, with say, 50 of them strung together. There was money to be made. I later decided that it would be better to silver plate them and turn them into drop earrings. Just one per ear. You could name your price, but $4.95 for a set of earrings should mean they’d sell like hotcakes while realising a handsome profit. I really did mean to spend $100 on some rolls of 1- cent coins. Did I do it? Nup. Too lazy and short-sighted.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
