• (cs) in reply to Someone You Know
    Someone You Know:
    Rui:
    Of course no one beats the USA when it comes to silliness:

    http://usrarecurrency.com/WebPgFl/C00015446A/1934$1000FRNSnC00015446A.jpg

    Fortunately those are no longer in circulation. It would be interesting to try to pay for candy or a bottle of water with one.

    We had the same bill in Canada, it wasn't replaced when we redid our currency. http://www.bankofcanada.ca/en/banknotes/general/character/1986_1000.html

  • Porquinho Babe (unregistered)

    Yes, we need the 2 cent coins. It's pretty obvious why. You need coins of 1, 2 and 5 in order to make every possible number.

  • Hub (unregistered)

    Re the 0.02EUR coin. It is designed to minmize the number of coins needed. If it didn't exist, you'd need 4 coins to do 4 cents, and 2 to do 2 cents instead of respectively 2 and 1. Similiarly there are 10, 20 and 50 cents, and 1 and 2 EUR.

    If only north-American coins where like that... I'm tired of having zillion of pennies. Even the 0.25 does not make sense. There should be a 0.20 and 0.50.

  • (cs) in reply to derJan
    derJan:
    Well, we, in Germany, have some stange prices like 2.98 € - don't ask me why...
    Sounds like you could use a 99 cent coin.
  • (cs) in reply to Porquinho Babe
    Porquinho Babe:
    Yes, we need the 2 cent coins. It's pretty obvious why. You need coins of 1, 2 and 5 in order to make every possible number.
    Nice to see that any denomination above "1" isn't, strictly speaking, redundant, as I had hitherto imagined.

    I think you'll find that you need some limit on combinatorial expressiveness to make this assertion work.

    I think you'll also find that Government Mints do not work on a strict basis of number theory; they tend to be influenced rather more by cultural references. Whilst it may be no great loss to Bauhaus architecture that you rarely, if ever, see a thirteenth floor in an American building (what are they thinking? That a mental midget who's hijacked a 747 will take that entire floor out cleanly, and everything from 14 up will collapse neatly over the remains?), it seems quite sad that you will probably never see a 4 renmimbi coin or note.

    But that's life. Meanwhile, my pockets are full of pointless shrapnel, and it's all denominated in 1s, 2s and 5s. At least I can make "every possible number," so long as I limit the bounds of possibility to a cup of (bad, English) coffee...

  • Tess (unregistered) in reply to Tsela

    In Sweden most people love salt licorice and it's probably the most common item that swedish people living abroad will ask visitors to bring.

    When i lived in the US I would stock up on salt licorice on every trip back home and one halloween we we had forgotten to buy candy for trick or treaters so we gave them licorice. Needless to say, we never had any more trick or treaters come to our door...

  • Sami (unregistered) in reply to keigezellig
    keigezellig:
    Seriously Europe, you really need a ¢2 coin?

    Here in the Netherlands (which is btw Europe..), we've already abandoned the 1 and 2 eurocent coins. Everything is rounded to 5 cents, like we did when we still had guilders (ahh old times :) )

    Finland have never used those 1 or 2 cent coins. All bills are rounded to closest 5 cents when paying by cash but card payments don't use rounding. Both of those can be used for paying though because it's still official money but I have never seen it happen (and I live in Finland).

  • (cs) in reply to The Mob
    The Mob:
    I thought the EUR500 was to make it the preferred currency of people hording money, thus taking it out of circulation.
    Might be. The theory runs against Gresham's Law, which is one of only two economic theories I have ever seen that actually make incontrovertible sense (the other being Ricardo). As usual, the idea that "Bad money drives out good" is widely misinterpreted -- what it actually means is that, if you are going to stick one form of fiat money under the mattress for later, and use another form for actual purchases, then you are going to use "bad money" for the purchases.

    This of course results in the commercial world being flooded with "bad money." There's a multiplier effect caused by general lack of confidence in the general currency of exchange, though.

    It's a common feature of Byzantine history (particularly after the Nicaean restoration in 1260), where the hyperpyron (nominally gold-based) was regularly adulterated by the state, which controlled the centralised mint, for political purposes. Not that I'm drawing any parallels with the current day, or US Dollars, or anything, of course.

    Which would lead us on, nicely, to Mark Twain, who I had always imagined had written a short satire caclled "The Million Dollar Bill." The Internets seem to prove me mistaken in this belief. I appear to have a faulty memory for either "The Twenty-Five Million Dollar Bill," or "The Thirty Thousand Dollar Bequest."

    Anyhoo, my net deduction is that the last thing you'd do with a Euro 500 bill is to hoard it. You'd spend the worthless thing and keep a barrel of crude under the mattress instread. (Well, three and a half barrels at current prices.)

    As for Ricardo? Pah. Go and look him up.

  • Nis (unregistered)

    You don't like Salmiakki? Seriously, I could eat the stuff by the bucket, but then I'm Danish so... :) Btw, it's Ammonium chloride that gives the great taste - see Salty liquorice at Wikipedia for some more info on this king of candies.

  • (cs) in reply to Christophe
    Christophe:
    ChiefCrazyTalk:
    My $0.02 worth....:
    The US screws this up with its $0.25 quarters...

    That's because a shave and a haircut costs 2 bits (25 cents)

    Hey buddy, can you spare a dollar so I can get a byte to eat?

    Interestingly enough, on that basis, four bits will get you a nibble... A rare case of a techie pun working consistently, I believe.

  • (cs) in reply to European
    European:
    Would you be a real engineer you would value the 1-2-5 10-20-50 etc. sequence the Euro currency comes in. Hint: it is the simplest approximation of x2 one can do when having to deal with the decimal system.
    Not quite as simple as 1-2-4-8-16... (Hint: the rest of this sequence involves a certain property of the number "2").

    If we're really going into this "three coin" thing, then obviously there's only one optimal solution. Like any other rational solution not requiring a bastardised version of the Fibonacci series, it's not correct, but it is at least optimal.

    However, as I think I've mentioned, cultural mores play a distinct part in the choice.

    (And last time I checked, "1" is indeed part of the decimal system.)

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Bruce
    Bruce:
    America seriously needs to abandon both the penny and the dollar bill.

    Agreed on the dollar bill. The US mint has tried to introduce dollar coins several times in the past (citing that they are cheaper in the long run because they last much longer than notes) but always end up backing off because they are unpopular. I have a simple solution for this problem, stop printing dollar bills. Who cares if people don't like dollar coins, if they don't have the bills anymore people will use them. If that doesn't work, mint a new dollar coin and stick Ronald Reagan on it. All those crazies that wanted Reagan on the dime (displacing FDR) will have to choose between their beloved president and their beloved green back.

  • Feek (unregistered) in reply to Dan H
    Dan H:
    At least our money feels like money, rather than the play money the US uses as currency. Seriously, the USA, try using proper paper for your notes.

    What do you use anyway? American bills are made out of a combination of cotton and linen.

  • Danish Guy (unregistered)

    Apparently, taste buds in Scandinavia is different than the rest of the world. Salty liquorice, like salmiakki, is plentiful in Scandinavia, but impossible to obtain outside of it. If I ever lived longer periods abroad, I would stock up on this :) I love it.

  • Merl (unregistered)

    mmmmm... Drakes cakes makes, iirc, Devil Dogs, a very tasty if rather convenience-store tinged snack in the grand tradition of HoHos. Funny story: I went from highschool in New England, Drakes country, to college in Texas (more like Moon-Pie country), and when I ttold my friends and future wife about the magical Devil Dog, and they refused to believe me. I had to actually buy the young lady one years later to convince her.

  • NightGod (unregistered) in reply to Bruce
    Bruce:
    America seriously needs to abandon both the penny and the dollar bill. Pennies are worth too little to be worth bothering with, and I just hate try to feed dollar bills into vending machines. The new dollar coins are adequate; they're at least visually distinctive from the quarter, unlike the Suzie B.'s.

    The only place dollar bills remain useful is strip clubs!

    Reason enough, my friend, reason enough.

  • Frosk (unregistered) in reply to Brother Laz

    Personally, I prefer Japanese money... 1, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 500 yen coins (1 yen ~= 1 cent) 1000, 2000 (relatively new), 5000, 10000 ($100) bills are the standardly used ones. If you have one of each coin you have 666 yen (well... its pronounce "en", but thats a whole other story)

  • Louie (unregistered) in reply to real_aardvark
    real_aardvark:
    Which would lead us on, nicely, to Mark Twain, who I had always imagined had written a short satire caclled "The Million Dollar Bill." The Internets seem to prove me mistaken in this belief. I appear to have a faulty memory for either "The Twenty-Five Million Dollar Bill," or "The Thirty Thousand Dollar Bequest."
    It's a million pounds actually: http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/MilPou.shtml I always liked that story.
  • NightGod (unregistered)

    On the topic of being rid of pennies in the US-actually, most (all?) military bases did this years ago-the solution is to keep a cup of 1 cent mints at the register-you'll get rounded up to the next five cents either way, but at least if you feel bad about being ripped off, you can grab a couple mints to soothe your angst.

  • The real WTF... (unregistered)

    And the real WTF is the Canadian Twonie! Which by now should be worth something like US$ 9.48... US$ 9.53... US$ 9.76...

  • Tuuli Mustasydän (unregistered) in reply to Danish Guy

    A European imports store near me sells those salmiak-filled Turkish Pepper candies that someone mentioned in an earlier post. The store also sells a lot of Dutch liquorice.

    So maybe it's just a matter of finding a random imports store?

  • Me (unregistered) in reply to Bruce
    Bruce:
    America seriously needs to abandon both the penny and the dollar bill. Pennies are worth too little to be worth bothering with, and I just hate try to feed dollar bills into vending machines. The new dollar coins are adequate; they're at least visually distinctive from the quarter, unlike the Suzie B.'s.

    The only place dollar bills remain useful is strip clubs!

    I could imagine a lot of uses for coins, too :-)

  • Matt (unregistered)

    If you want to want to try something really weird from Finland it should be their tar candy. It's for sore throats, and it actually tastes of tar. Silly people.

  • csb (unregistered) in reply to Dan H
    Dan H:
    As for silly denominations of money, our continental friends not only have the eminently sensible two-eurocent coin, but also notes up to the value of EUR500 (slightly more than USD650). This, I understand, is primarily to please the Germans, who like carrying large sums of money on their persons.

    No, it was done to make sure the Hollywood movie gangsters could lug around several millions w/o needing a truck for it. And w/o having to check each single note for falsification.

    To tell the truth, apart from tradition (1000 DM notes), I have no idea what the 500 EUR notes are for ... shops regularly refuse 100 € notes ... and, no, we Germans don't usually run around with 500€ notes. Though we use much less plastic money than the US-Americans.

  • DJ Beret (unregistered)

    I have always been taught that "salmiak" is the trivial name for ammonium chloride. Was it really candy what was in the packaging?

  • Nis (unregistered) in reply to DJ Beret
    DJ Beret:
    I have always been taught that "salmiak" is the trivial name for ammonium chloride. Was it really candy what was in the packaging?
    Yes, there is indeed ammonium chloride in those candies. And, let me tell you, the more the better. To be fair it does state on the package (in Denmark anyway) that it's "Liquorice for adults, not kids".
  • Kasper (unregistered) in reply to Fabian
    Nope, the Dutch do that too. Though it may actually be in Finnish alcohol.
    You can find that in Denmark as well. Here is a picture of what the bottles looks like in Denmark. The Danish variant tastes a little better than the Finnish one. When searching for pictures of it on the internet, I found this picture on a Dutch website. The large bottle looks different from anything I have seen in Denmark, but some of the text on them is Danish. So it does sound like some of what the Dutch drinks may be of Danish origin
  • Jimmy Jones (unregistered) in reply to Brother Laz

    Better than the USA where every bank note looks exactly the same. How do blind people cope in America?

  • wds (unregistered)

    To the poster that said 1c and 2c aren't used in the benelux, that is actually wrong: they are in common circulation in Belgium. (which is the "be" part in benelux)

    Real men make their own salmiakki flavored booze btw. :)

  • Nicolai (unregistered)

    Actually, having spent half a year in the US and being back in Euro country now, I'm glad we have the 2c coins. The number of 1c coins that I accumulated over there in the US was just ridiculous; having 2c coins helps against that madness.

  • Jeltz (unregistered)

    Ammonium chloride flavoured candy is really tasty. But tar flavoured liquorice is even better. I really should try to figure out how to get myself some tar candy in Stockholm. I believe tar candy is more popular in Finland so the Finnish guy really should have added some tar candy too.

    Mmmm, ammonium cholride and tar...

  • Jeltz (unregistered) in reply to Jeltz

    Here is an example of tar flavoured liquorice. My personal favourite.

    http://kioskkiosk.com/p/613

  • (cs) in reply to real_aardvark
    real_aardvark:
    Anon:
    Seriously Europe, you really need a ¢2 coin?

    Think about it, that's a 50% saving in the number of coins you need to carry. Brillant!

    I still remember when Britain had 1/2p coins. Those were the days...

    ... but not nearly as those-were-like as the days when we had 1/4d coins (with a friendly little robin on the reverse). 960 of them to the pound: what joy! (Or, more usefully, 1008 of them to the Guinea.)

    I'm not old enough to remember the farthing, but I can remember the ha'penny, the 12-sided thrupenny piece, and the 10-bob note. Ahhh, the delight of getting one of those as a small child!
    real_aardvark:
    Joe Luser:
    Romanian notes are plastic with a transparent section. This probably makes them hard to counterfeit by copying.
    What, there are seriously people out there who want to counterfeit Romanian notes? WTF?
    Maybe the Romanian authorities are paranoid. I expect that they will adopt the Euro before UK does.
  • undo (unregistered) in reply to Sami
    Someone You Know:
    Out of curiosity, what exactly is your paper money printed on? As you say, American paper money isn't actually paper, it's some kind of fibrous fabric stuff.

    Euro banknotes are 100% cotton.

    Joe Luser:
    Romanian notes are plastic with a transparent section. This probably makes them hard to counterfeit by copying.

    Those Romanian notes are actually printed in Australia. IIRC, Australia and New Zealand were the first places to introduce plastic banknotes (with see-through windows).

    Sami:
    Finland have never used those 1 or 2 cent coins.

    Interestingly, the coins are still legal tender and must be accepted in Finland. The mountains of useless 1 and 2 cent coins that tourists bring into the country are then regularly shipped over to Germany, where they are very much in use.

  • CornedBee (unregistered) in reply to Brother Laz
    Brother Laz:
    TRWTF is that the three lowest value Euro coins have the exact same design, colour, and almost the same size.

    After seven years I still have to check the numbers on the damn things, because the 2 cent coin in particular becomes arbitrarily similar to the 1 and 5 cent coins as store lighting decreases to zero.

    Feel the groove around the edge of the 2-cent coin. All coins are easily identified by touch, even by inexperienced people. Assuming they went through the trouble of learning the rules.

    Oh, and the big 500 euro note is purple and lavender. I know we're Europeans and we're supposed to be artsy and metrosexual, but... come on.
    Pshh, so what?

    Oh, and the 2 cent coin is there for consistency. The values of the various Euro coins and bills is, in rising value: Coins: 0.01, 0.02, 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 1, 2 Bills: 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500 The way I see it, that's better than having 0.05, 0.10 and 0.25 coins, and then nothing up to the dollar coin/bill. (At least not that I can remember.)

  • Samba (unregistered) in reply to Bruce

    I get so confused when I head Europe wise; All the UK coins are distinctive in size and/or shape; Crazy europeans with their much too similar coins. Gr.

  • Jeltz (unregistered) in reply to Samba
    Samba:
    I get so confused when I head Europe wise; All the UK coins are distinctive in size and/or shape; Crazy europeans with their much too similar coins. Gr.

    I thought the same thing when I went to the USA. Maybe it is just Sweden with our just 4 kinds of coins, of which the smallest is almost never used so it really is just 3. And their shapes are clearly distinct.

  • Kari (unregistered) in reply to Tuuli Mustasydän
    Tuuli Mustasydän:
    A European imports store near me sells those salmiak-filled Turkish Pepper candies that someone mentioned in an earlier post. The store also sells a lot of Dutch liquorice.

    And with that you can make home-made salmiakkikossu (a Finnish salmiak-flavoured vodka) easily with vodka, crushed Turkish Pepper and some patience. Tastes great (one or two shots, I don't recommend drinking excessive ammounts of that stuff...)

    -k

  • Moz (unregistered) in reply to Rui
    Rui:
    Of course no one beats the USA when it comes to silliness:

    http://usrarecurrency.com/WebPgFl/C00015446A/1934$1000FRNSnC00015446A.jpg

    I don't know. Venezuela has a coin worth 1/8 of a Bolivar, but the smallest denomination in circulation is 1 Centimo. I don't know what they actually charge for stuff, though.

  • Porquinho Babe (unregistered) in reply to real_aardvark
    real_aardvark:
    Porquinho Babe:
    Yes, we need the 2 cent coins. It's pretty obvious why. You need coins of 1, 2 and 5 in order to make every possible number.
    Nice to see that any denomination above "1" isn't, strictly speaking, redundant, as I had hitherto imagined.

    I think you'll find that you need some limit on combinatorial expressiveness to make this assertion work.

    I think you'll also find that Government Mints do not work on a strict basis of number theory; they tend to be influenced rather more by cultural references. Whilst it may be no great loss to Bauhaus architecture that you rarely, if ever, see a thirteenth floor in an American building (what are they thinking? That a mental midget who's hijacked a 747 will take that entire floor out cleanly, and everything from 14 up will collapse neatly over the remains?), it seems quite sad that you will probably never see a 4 renmimbi coin or note.

    But that's life. Meanwhile, my pockets are full of pointless shrapnel, and it's all denominated in 1s, 2s and 5s. At least I can make "every possible number," so long as I limit the bounds of possibility to a cup of (bad, English) coffee...

    Enjoy the rest of our coins: 20, 50 100 and 200.

  • (cs) in reply to CornedBee
    CornedBee:
    Oh, and the 2 cent coin is there for consistency. The values of the various Euro coins and bills is, in rising value: Coins: 0.01, 0.02, 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 1, 2 Bills: 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500 The way I see it, that's better than having 0.05, 0.10 and 0.25 coins, and then nothing up to the dollar coin/bill. (At least not that I can remember.)
    Please God, do not let me turn in to a numismatic obsessive...

    There is, in fact, a US 50c coin, but for some reason it's rarely used. I suspect that the concept of "a quarter," or "two bits," or "doubloon" (currently trading at roughly half of a doubloonie) is too hard-baked into the American consciousness. I particularly like the fact that current quarters commemorate individual states on the reverse. I'm looking forward to going through Miami airport at some stage and rejecting the Florida one because "it's not a real State, is it? More of a diseased swamp, really."

    And nobody has mentioned Mexico yet. It's the only country I can think of where they (correctly) alternate between "copper" and "silver" coinage, but then revalue the currency such that an old 50 copper peso is now the shiny new 50 silver peso, and so on. They also resize them, arbitrarily. For all I know, the change the milling, but then I was too disorientated to check.

    It's quite a clever way of encouraging you to learn Spanish, because otherwise you can't tell what the hell is going on.

  • Tuuli Mustasydän (unregistered) in reply to Kari
    Kari:
    Tuuli Mustasydän:
    A European imports store near me sells those salmiak-filled Turkish Pepper candies that someone mentioned in an earlier post. The store also sells a lot of Dutch liquorice.
    And with that you can make home-made salmiakkikossu (a Finnish salmiak-flavoured vodka) easily with vodka, crushed Turkish Pepper and some patience. Tastes great (one or two shots, I don't recommend drinking excessive ammounts of that stuff...)

    -k

    I did that with the package of Turkish Pepper that a friend sent me from Finland (before I found out I could buy it here) ;)

    Then I dared my friends to try it :P

  • Ugh (unregistered)

    Seriously, how can anyone lot like a candy whose name was made up of liquor and ice?

    We sometimes go through a pound a week of the stuff at the office.

    Captcha: appellatio - giving the appellate court a free blowjob? -- WTF?

  • (cs)

    Mahagony? Nice!

  • sjc (unregistered)

    I don't think you Americans can talk. In Australia there are no 1c or 2c coins, whilst the New Zealanders have gone even further and got rid of 5c coins!

  • tootie (unregistered) in reply to Teh Optermizar
    Teh Optermizar:
    sweavo:
    Coxy:
    Australian banknotes are apparently waterproof. <stereotype>probably so it doesn't get ruined if they get drunk and fall in the pool at a barbie</stereotype>

    It's so that when your hat (where you keep your wonga) is eaten by a croc, and you wrestle the croc to get it back, you can still buy a round of stubbies for your mates afterwards.

    Hurrah for post-croc-wrestle beers!

    Being waterproof is seriously the best thing about Aussie banknotes... its a magical feeling not having to worry when you realise that you left cash in your pockets and you are hanging out your washing, and out come the notes, perfectly intact (and squeaky clean as a bonus!)

    The only problem is if you then accidently iron it after taking it off the line... unless you like mini-money.

  • Anon (unregistered)

    anyone sent in an envelope of talc powder yet?

  • Thor (unregistered)

    Ahh...that's a good assortment of Finnish candy. I have a friend there and I always look forward to receiving Fazer chocolates and Salmiak. Sorry to hear you didn't like the salmiak... Too bad they didn't send you any Suomi Viina :) That would wipe away that salmiak taste..errr..maybe I should say burn away..hehe

  • Cpt (unregistered) in reply to Dan H
    Dan H:
    <snip> At least our money feels like money, rather than the play money the US uses as currency. Seriously, the USA, try using proper paper for your notes.

    Why bother? In a few years most people will use it as toilet paper anyway looking at the current exchange rate.... Typically American: if it ain't American, it must be useless... 2ct coins are useless, 7 sided coins are useless and salmiak tastes like cigarette butts.. Yeah... like the Cheeseburger is a useful addition to the culinary universe.

  • paratus (unregistered) in reply to Kari
    Kari:
    Tuuli Mustasydän:
    A European imports store near me sells those salmiak-filled Turkish Pepper candies that someone mentioned in an earlier post. The store also sells a lot of Dutch liquorice.

    And with that you can make home-made salmiakkikossu (a Finnish salmiak-flavoured vodka) easily with vodka, crushed Turkish Pepper and some patience. Tastes great (one or two shots, I don't recommend drinking excessive ammounts of that stuff...)

    -k

    In sweden we call it peber shots. And I usually make it with stroh 80, and mix it with so much turkish pepper that its pitch black and gooey. ;) Tastes exactly like the candy, only more. And people get really drunk when then drink it by the half litres thinking its not so strong. MOAHA!

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