Originally published at: Thieves stole $100,000 in dimes off a truck in a Walmart parking lot | Boing Boing
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A million dimes weighs about 5000 pounds. So I’m suspecting way more than one person here. Personally I can farmer’s carry 60 pounds in each hand at the most. At 120 pounds between the two hands, that’s 40 trips back and forth. (And again, that’s just me.) .
Pretty diligent thieves.
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A dime weighs 2.268 grams, so that’s just over 500 lbs of dimes.
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“Strewn around”.
Watching the story, it looks like they were in 5 gal buckets? I would have thought they’d be wrapped? I mean, I’ve been to the mint ; they don’t send the money out by folding them up and stuffing them in the driver’s pockets and/or thong…unless that’s how they do it in Philly?
On the plus side, those cowboys in Blazing Saddles are all set!
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They didn’t steal 100,000 dimes. They stole $100,000 worth of dimes.
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Yep, so you’d need a large truck and probably at least a half-dozen people. Even then it would be a hell of a task. And then what do you do with them?
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There is this debate I’ve heard about whether it’s worthwhile to pick up coins on the sidewalk. Most of the time folks will pick up a quarter, and if it’s a pile of silver coins they will reach down and grab most of them, but pennies, never.
So I’m curious how the thieves would’ve reacted if the truck had been full of pennies.
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i came for this and was not disappointed!
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Same.
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Depends on how desperate you are. When i was at my most broke i did this a lot. I lived in Reno NV at the time and was close to the university, and i could find discarded change everywhere. It was mostly pennies but you could get lucky and find other coins too, still i was able to gather about 10 bucks worth of pennies. I was so broke that paying Coinstar to cash those wasn’t feasable for me and i didn’t think to go to a bank so instead i would slowly change my pennies for other coins while at work at a coffee shop. To me that loose change meant being able to eat a burger one on day or not, or being able to spend a little bit extra at the grocery store and get a slightly nicer food item.
These days i make an ok income and no longer feel the need to pick up loose change
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In tangentially related news, De La Rue, the company which prints banknotes for the Bank of England and various other countries, has issued a profit warning due to the slowdown in demand for cash caused partly by the Covid situation.
Astonishingly, a licence to print money turns out not to be all that of a good thing.
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I’ll save you reading the whole thing:
"Its boss, Clive Vacher, told the BBC that central banks had stepped up orders for bank notes during Covid as they always did in economic crises. But they were now delaying new orders as they ran through their stock.
“They always do that when there are crises, because of the security that having cash around them has,” he said.
“So we expected a downturn, which has indeed happened, but that downturn is probably extending deeper and probably for an extra 9-12 months than we’d normally expect in the normal cycle of things,” he said.
It comes as consumer use of cash is in decline in many countries as more transactions are made online or with cards, and particularly contactless payments."
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So $100,000 of dimes = 2,268 kg or 4,989.6 lbs. Better bring a truck.
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Cops are asking mechanics in the area if anyone has recently bought new shock absorbers or struts, and paid in dimes.
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with the change of monach since the covid though, won’t the Bank of England (or whatever institution oversees treasury) need to make all new currency to reflect that change? i know the Queen’s notes will be usable for years to come, but at some point, the Chuck Bucks have to populate the tills, no?
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and inflation. not just of these last few years either. a quarter really doesn’t buy anything these days.
i’ve got the same question. i wonder if it’d be easiest to melt them, and sell it as scrap?
i thought they came in bags. cause i hear that all the time. dime bag this, dime bag that. how much for a dime bag?
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That’s a lot of gumballs.
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I did get my first Chucky III 50p coin the other day.
The banknotes are designed, but they’ll use up the QE2s first - these things cost money, dontcha know!
They get naturally cycled out of existence, but we’ll be seeing queenie for decades yet.
I don’t think the five-pound notes will be collector’s items either, which is a shame as I have nearly four of them.
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