Crazy things you've found in Google StreetView

[formulanone]

So I made it a game to try to get rid of them before the shift ended so I wouldn't have to do that.

I remember doing stuff like that when I worked the cashier shift in a grocery store; if you got a $50 or $2 bill, I'd try to pass it off as soon as possible. Getting rid of the two-dollar-bills wasn't too difficult, since they're generally perceived as "lucky", but usually you wanted to give it to a customer who was getting a little more than $2.04 in change back.

There always seemed to be at least one customer a day that bought $4.57 of items and paid for it with a $100 bill. I'd usually hand over some obnoxious amount of change near the end of the shift just to mess with them. "Okay, 50-60-70-75-80-85-90-91-92-(8 quarters)-(8 dimes)-(10 nickels)-(13 pennies)...have a nice day!" (Sometimes, that's literally all you had left towards the end of your shift; other times, you just had to make a game out of people.)

I usually preferred to be away from the front of the store, but when they later told me my till was never off by more than five cents, I knew why I was sent up front for half a shift whenever someone was out or it became busy.

[NWI_Irish96]

I always thought $50 was a pointless denomination anyway. Bills have virtually no weight. It's not an inconvenience to have to carry $20s and $10s instead of $50s.

[kphoger]

I always thought $50 was a pointless denomination anyway. Bills have virtually no weight. It's not an inconvenience to have to carry $20s and $10s instead of $50s.

I love $50 bills when traveling, because a tank of gas usually costs me around $35-$45 or so.  Fill up with a $50, get change back, and use that to pay for the family's snacks at the next pit stop.

I also love $2 bills while traveling for a similar reason.  If it's just me buying a small snack, then chances are good my total is between $1 and $2.

[Scott5114]

I always thought $50 was a pointless denomination anyway. Bills have virtually no weight. It's not an inconvenience to have to carry $20s and $10s instead of $50s.

$50s were less pointless back when we were on the gold standard. In 1928, a $20 bill was worth about $310 today and a $50 was worth $774 today. That's a big enough difference in value to make it worth having.

These days the pointlessness of $50s isn't due to anything inherent about the denomination itself (as kphoger points out, they're convenient for gas fill-ups, and they can make amounts of $70-79 or $90-99 less cumbersome since they replace 3 bills, or 4 if $10s aren't available) but because of the awkward spot they fall in as regards acceptance. $50s are large enough they get the suspicion and non-acceptance that $100s do ("no bills over $20 accepted") and yet $50 is really not a whole lot of money.

With a $100 at least you have the utility of being good for large purchases...although it still would take more than one of them to cover a grocery run for me and my wife. $100 isn't what it once was. I wish they'd bring back the $500.

I also love $2 bills while traveling for a similar reason.  If it's just me buying a small snack, then chances are good my total is between $1 and $2.

I love $2s in general, and when I have the money to do so, will buy them a strap at a time from the bank. It's nice to not have to deal with a bunch of $1s. A lot of people don't realize they're still printed, though in much smaller quantities than $1s. It's kind of fun watching people in drive thrus with them–cashiers will invariably hold them up to the light, see nothing (because $2s are printed on the same stock as $1s, so no watermark or anything), and then accept them anyway.

People at the casino didn't like them because some of the machines weren't configured to accept them, so you had to sneak those out the same way as the $50s. (Again, why would you take money home from the casino??)

[kphoger]

What I dislike on my trips to Mexico is this:

I pay cash for my vehicle import permit deposit, which runs $200-$400 depending on the model year of your vehicle.  Before leaving Mexico, I then cancel my permit and reclaim my deposit.  No matter how I paid for it, Banjercito refunds me in 100-dollar bills.  By that point in the trip, the only thing I'm going to pay for that costs more than $100 is a motel room.  So I have to do one of two things:

1.  Start out my trip with an extra couple of hundred dollars' worth of small bills to cover gas and lunch and stuff on the northbound trip.  This solution is undesirable because it involves carrying extra cash for no good reason.  (I won't bother getting into why I use cash instead of plastic on these trips.)

2.  Plan on paying for something small with a 100-dollar bill, and hope that establishment accepts bills larger than $20.

[Scott5114]

Why not stop at a bank somewhere in Texas and have them break the bills for you? (Yes, it's an extra stop, but it would avoid the awkwardness of trying to break a bill at a business that may not have much of an interest in doing so.)

[kphoger]

Why not stop at a bank somewhere in Texas and have them break the bills for you? (Yes, it's an extra stop, but it would avoid the awkwardness of trying to break a bill at a business that may not have much of an interest in doing so.)

We cross the border after the banks have already closed in Del Rio, and we leave our motel in Sonora before the bank there opens in the morning.  By the time I could find an open bank convenient to our route, I would already have made half the purchases I'm talking about.

Also, it's a 600-mile drive from Sonora to Wichita, we don't stop for supper before going home, and we hate unloading the car as it is.  Making an extra stop isn't exactly appealing.

[Scott5114]

If you crossed at Eagle Pass, there's a casino there you could make change at. But that would probably be even more of a hassle than dealing with the $100s, because that would entail crossing the border and going south for a bit.

[kphoger]

If you crossed at Eagle Pass, there's a casino there you could make change at. But that would probably be even more of a hassle than dealing with the $100s, because that would entail crossing the border and going south for a bit.

...and add 18 miles to my trip, even without the jaunt to the casino.  It's usually pushing 8:30 or 9:00 PM when we get to the motel as it is.

Besides, my point is that it's annoying.  As I said, there are solutions.  I just wish it weren't a problem to begin with.

While we're on the subject...  It seems pretty unreasonable for some places to not accept any bills over $20.  I mean, even a family of five spending $8 each at a fast food joint gets close to the $50 mark.  I understand not accepting 100s, but 50s?

[Scott5114]

Usually, when you see such a thing, it's for a number of reasons:

• Most people pay with $20s because that's what the ATM dispenses, so you don't really risk losing much business by not accepting $50s or $100s, especially if a high percentage of them is people intentionally breaking them on things like candy bars.
• Higher risk of counterfeiting. A $50 isn't much harder to counterfeit than a $20, but is worth more than twice as much, and thus represents twice as much of a liability for the business to accept. Not that it's too hard to spot a counterfeit–every one I've ever seen has been so obvious that anyone with eyeballs would be able to see it...but based on the number of people who said they got the counterfeit from 7-Eleven or something. Some businesses may feel like they don't get enough $50s or $100s for their cashiers to be familiar with what they look like. (They should be training the cashiers better, but how often do businesses do what they should?)
• Businesses often have a starting till of something like $100. If you have someone come in early in the shift, buy a $5 item, and pay with a $100, well, you basically have to close out the register and go get another starting till like a new cashier is on duty. Usually they only have so many starting tills available, so this can be very disruptive.
• Some businesses are sensitive to the threat of robbery, so they have a policy of only keeping X amount in the drawer at all times. If the cashier's drawer gets above that amount, they're supposed to put the overage into the safe, which is often a drop safe that can only be opened with a manager's key. The amount that the business is comfortable getting robbed by may not be large enough to cover a $50 or $100 and leave change to spare for the next customer.

I wish bank ATMs were like casino ATMs that let you insert a bill into them and it dispenses the next denomination down.

[kphoger]

Not that it's too hard to spot a counterfeit–every one I've ever seen has been so obvious that anyone with eyeballs would be able to see it...but based on the number of people who said they got the counterfeit from 7-Eleven or something.

Late one morning in March 2009, I stopped at the Subway attached to the Chevron station in Devine, TX (Exit #122).  The cashier marked my $20 bill, handed it back to me, and told me it was counterfeit, that I might want to talk to whomever had given it to me.  I thought about it for a few seconds.  I had gotten it from the bank.

[Scott5114]

I thought about it for a few seconds.  I had gotten it from the bank.

Well, did you see the bank teller check it?

Those counterfeit pens are total garbage anyway. You wanna know how I know?


You'll notice, of course, there is no such place as the "Kingdom of Tanrylonia"–that's the fictional country my D&D games take place in (capital: Quindaro, cause I have a problem). This is play money, but it marks good with the pen. How? The pen just reacts to the starch in wood pulp. So if you use cotton-fiber paper like the kind I got off of Amazon and printed this on, the pen marks good. Likewise, you can get genuine bills to fail by spraying them with starch.

The best way to check if a bill is real is to put it under UV light. The security strip will glow if the bill is genuine.

[mrsman]

While we are on the topic of money, ideally each next level of currency should be either 2x or 2.5x the previous level of currency.  US does a pretty good job on it:

.05
.10
.25 [to really be ideal, the quarter would be replaced with a 20c piece, but 25c is also OK]
.50
1
2
5
10
20
50
100

That being said, the next sets of currency to be made available should be 200, 500, 1000.  $1000 may be too much of a problem for counterfeiting and money laundering.

With a little research, I was able to discover that there were once 500-McKinley, 1000-Cleveland, 5000-Madison, and 10,000-Chase bills.  If those should ever come back into circulation, 200 and 2000 notes should as well.  Given inflation, there are some good arguments for creating a new $200 bill.  Who should be honored to grace its face?

[Big John]

^^Reagan?

[noelbotevera]

Screw it. John Hancock. That man has the biggest signature on the Declaration of Independence even though nobody cares about what he did.

[SSOWorld]

^^Reagan?

[Scott5114]

.25 [to really be ideal, the quarter would be replaced with a 20c piece, but 25c is also OK]

I always thought it was odd that we had a $20 bill but a 25¢ coin. Pick one or the other. (Europe has €20 and €0.20, and also has both €2 and €0.02 coins.)

With a little research, I was able to discover that there were once 500-McKinley, 1000-Cleveland, 5000-Madison, and 10,000-Chase bills.  If those should ever come back into circulation, 200 and 2000 notes should as well.  Given inflation, there are some good arguments for creating a new $200 bill.  Who should be honored to grace its face?

It'd be nice if it wasn't a politician or President. BEP has a bit more leeway in who they put on savings bonds, so they have some engravings of non-political figures like Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King Jr., Helen Keller, and Chief Joseph. It'd be nice to see those reused on actual money.

It would be kind of nice if we got away from having people's faces on money to begin with. A lot of countries have vignettes of things that are important to that country. Might be nice to see things that are American that aren't people, like the Golden Gate Bridge, the Grand Canyon, the Great Plains, the Mississippi River, etc.

If we must have a politician, perhaps one of the Roosevelts. FDR is on the dime but not on any paper money, and Teddy hasn't ever been on anything. Eisenhower might be nice; you could put a map of the Interstate System on the back...but that's probably just a roadgeek fantasy...

[hotdogPi]

I was thinking Henry Clay. A friend I know wants Ruth Bader Ginsburg (if it's after the 2-year period ends).

Might be nice to see things that are American that aren't people, like the Golden Gate Bridge, the Grand Canyon, the Great Plains, the Mississippi River, etc..

We already have buildings on the reverse side.

[kphoger]

While we are on the topic of money, ideally each next level of currency should be either 2x or 2.5x the previous level of currency.  US does a pretty good job on it:

.05
.10
.25 [to really be ideal, the quarter would be replaced with a 20c piece, but 25c is also OK]
.50
1
2
5
10
20
50
100

That being said, the next sets of currency to be made available should be 200, 500, 1000.  $1000 may be too much of a problem for counterfeiting and money laundering.

Coins and Bills of the Mexican Peso

5¢
10¢
20¢
50¢
$1
$2
$5
$10
$20



$20
$50
$100
$200
$500
$1000

[hotdogPi]

Mexico has too many bimetallic coins.

Should we merge this discussion into the "Funny money" thread?

[kphoger]

Mexico has too many bimetallic coins.

Too many for what?

[hotdogPi]

Mexico has too many bimetallic coins.

Too many for what?

Bimetallic coins are supposed to signify a high value in addition to making them easier to identify at a quick glance. Some currencies, like the euro, have two, one with the gold color on the outside and one with the silver color on the outside. Mexico has five denominations of bimetallic coins, with three of one type and two of the other, with the 1 peso coin only being worth about as a US nickel.

[kphoger]

How is that any worse than every US coin except the penny being the same color?

[kphoger]

Honestly, I've never had much trouble with coins in Mexico.  Gold-ringed ones are the higher denominations (for purchases I might use a $1 or $2 USD bill for here), silver-ringed ones are the lower denominations (for making exact change, same as here), single-color coins are for nitpicky establishments that still don't round to the nearest peso.

[Big John]

How is that any worse than every US coin except the penny being the same color?

The newer rarely used $1 coin is golden color.