Loose Change

One of the interesting things that happens when you live outside the US is accumulating multiple countries worth of spare change. Admittedly it is not as bad now as it was 20-30 years ago. Prior to the EU, every last country had its own currency which obviously included coinage. Now it is just the UK (and Scotland, we can’t forget Scotland which insists on printing its own Pound Notes) of the major countries which don’t play.

There are several other EU countries which have their own but frankly the merchants are more than willing to take Euros. Scandinavia is uses various Kroner (Norway, Sweden, Denmark) but Finland has been on the Euro since the start.

The reason I started down this line? Cleaning which involves picking up loose change.

Now it would be sensible to expect that we would have some US coinage given how often one of us travels to the US. Euros – well we live in the EU. Swiss Francs because George is there three days a week on those weeks where he can’t find a reason to be else where.

Then you have to remember that I have traveled to the UK and Norway more than once in the last year. And Australia last fall along with New Zealand and various stops in Canada. I pretty much avoided changing money in South America.

All told, I think I have a couple of kilos of mixed coins. I’m going to try and sort it out into spendable and not-spendable. The first category are those coins where I can physically use them (Euros for candy bars), US swapped for real money at the credit union, Swiss back in George’s pocket or back pack. I’ll use whatever pence and pounds I can find when I fly to London for WorldCon in Aug. I can probably even find Canadians and Aussies on my next cruise and send their coinage back with them (or see option below).

But there are coins for which there is no hope. I am even hesitant to drop them in one of the airplane donation envelopes. After all – DM have been out of circulation for over a decade; ditto with the French Franc.  Then there are the dinar, shekels, hwan.  I need to ask Terry what they do with weird coins. Especially since it might make up a good third of what we have on hand….

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One Response to Loose Change

  1. catdownunder says:

    Have you got any coins with magnetic properties? If so, Senior Cat will use them for conjuring tricks.
    As for the Australian coinage – remember you have yet to make a return trip here!

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