Originally published at: Scam alert — cheats are using cheap Turkish coin as a 2-euro coin | Boing Boing
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Istanbul, Istanbul, ISTANBUL! I don’t know the rest of the song.
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Back in the '90s we found that the old Irish 5p coin was recognized as a Deutsch Mark by the german vending machines. Made out like bandits.
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That Lira also looks rather a lot like a Canadian Toonie. I suppose the spoofing likelihood is much lower than for Europe, since we don’t get a lot of travel to/from Turkey here.
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It used to be Constantinople. You can blame the Turks for the name change.
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I actually liked finding the occasional Canadian coin – it was close enough in value (and readily re-spendable) – that was always a little like getting a post card. Here you are out a meaningful amount.
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I don’t remember the coin, but one Mexican coin was just the right size for US parking meters.
We used to use 20 penni coins in vending machines in the early 90s they happened to be the same size as new 1 markka coins.
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I see your TMBG, and raise The Residents.
In Italy, I’ve also seen 10 baht (Thailand) making the rounds as 2 €.
Their diameter and the proportions between the two different metals are the same, so it’s difficult to tell them apart. Parking meters also think they are the same.
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When I was at Uni in the 90s and learning x-ray fluorescence, the lab had a big pile of foreign coins to use as test examples. A lot of the coins not only shared the same size, but also exactly the same elemental composition. Presumably this means that vending machines would have been unable to tell the difference.
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It’s been a while since I had a 2€ coin in my hands–and I’m from the Netherlands. Cash money is on the way out. Recently visited Sweden, never saw any currency during the entire trip.
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Yeah, I think this is more of a thing that people working the cash registers have to worry about, but cash becoming more rare means more looking at the coins before putting them into the till.
Me, I love going cashless. The main disadvantage is that I don’t see the spending limit as clearly as I do with pocket money, but that is offset by the automatic record keeping.
I’ve been living (mostly) in Sweden for the last 14 years.
“We” use cards even to buy a litre of milk (less than 1.5 $).
Quite different in Italy, this summer I had a number of discussion with shops and bars not taking cards (they must take it). I got some free coffee, though - I did not have any euros.
And the (expletive) government is even going to raise the maximum value for physical money transactions - a helping hand for tax evaders of all sorts…
In Sweden, some years ago I collected money for a retirement gift, 90% of the amount came through Swish (a very common phone payment service), someone gave me a note (~50$).
It had been gathering dust in a drawer for ages, until one day I noticed it and tried to pay with it.
No way, it had gone out of validity in the meantime!
Luckily I was still in time: I just had to put it in a Bankomat (ATM) to see it credited - few months more, and I would have lost it.
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French 20 Centime coins used to turn up in arcade games quite a bit as a quarter substitute in the 1980s. I forget if the difference in value was worth the effort of obtaining them.
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I love it also (can’t remember the last time I paid cash for something) but it’s good to remember there is privilege in it. Cash is necessary for lower income people, the most vulnerable, and people with little or no access to banking. For example people with no fixed address or experiencing homelessness generally have no access to the financial services required to be cashless.
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