Change over to Metric

[realjd]

And nowadays, with the inflation and the passage of time, quarters are the smallest USA coins left with any legitimate use in commerce anymore.  The smaller coins (1¢, 5¢ and 10¢) are now only really useful for parsing state and local sales taxes.

Due to our at-the-register sales tax mechanisms, they're necessary for change. I wouldn't mind dropping the penny though. I tend to let them accumulate in my desk and use them as vending machine money.

I'm one of the few Americans I know who prefers dollar coins, although I typically only ever get them if I pay cash in places like automatic parking garage ticket validators, or transit ticket vending machines.

[agentsteel53]

if I recall correctly, the Euro also has a 20 cent instead of a 25.

I had no problem (once I decided to start using the euro coins!) because I use US $20 bills a lot more than US quarters.

about the only place I use quarters is in parking meters, and at that point I'm paying closest attention to the minutes on the display as they go up, so it may as well be 20 cent pieces, or even tokens, which I am inserting.

[Michael in Philly]

....
I'm one of the few Americans I know who prefers dollar coins, although I typically only ever get them if I pay cash in places like automatic parking garage ticket validators, or transit ticket vending machines.

My father, before he got to the point (Parkinson's) where he couldn't get around on his own, was waging a one-man campaign to get them into circulation.  He'd buy a bunch at a bank and start spending them....

[mgk920]

Well, let's see....

1912 - good beer in a tavern/bar/beer hall - 5¢
2012 - $5+

1912 - car - $500 or so (these were 'rich mans' toys' until the mid-late 1920s)
2012 - (ranges in five figures based on quality and features)

1912 - daily newspaper - 1-2¢
2012 - $1-2

1912 - one night in a decent room in a downtown hotel - $2
2012 - $100-150

1912 - a really nice room - $3
2012 - $200-300

1912 - decent restaurant dinner meal for the family of four - 40-50¢
2012 - $30-40

1912 - first class letter - 3¢
2012 - 45¢ (Mail is a BARGAIN today!  In real inflation terms, a first class letter stamp should now be about $2.50.)

Etc.

And yes, I too would much rather be using higher value coins instead of banknotes for everyday commerce things like they do in Canada, Japan, Australia, Europe, etc.

Mike

[agentsteel53]

1912 - one night in a decent room in a downtown hotel - $2
2012 - $100-150

thanks.  this is a good comparison here because the price of that shouldn't much come down... sure, you get more features (color TV in every room!), but objectively speaking you are paying for something very similar.

I have a cast-iron sign which claims 25c for a night's stay rurally, with 10c extra for a bath.  this is from the late 19th century, and it jives well with paying about $30-40 for a clean but featureless room out in the sticks.

1912 - first class letter - 3¢
2012 - 45¢ (Mail is a BARGAIN today!  In real inflation terms, a first class letter stamp should now be about $2.50.)

I had thought about this, but decided it would be too tangential to the discussion (oh hey, metric system what now?) to introduce services priced by government fiat.  it might be more interesting to compare Pony Express to FedEx Overnight, revealing that it's much, much cheaper and quicker today thanks to our transportation infrastructure.

[english si]

Thruppenny bit and the decimal-tuppence is fairly obvious - three-penny and two-pence mushed together.

it must be the accent - I absolutely did not catch that "three" rhymes with "two"!  I had been visualizing "thru-penny", which made me imagine a very, very cheap fare on a particular New York toll road.

I should be more clear:
Thruppenny bit = 3d coin (three-penny)
Tuppence = 2p (two-pence)

It doesn't quite sound right, even with my accent, but say the phrase fast and you'll pick it up. Thruppenny has nothing to do with two.

the other thing is - in the US, you can pretty much get away without needing to look at coins.  Whenever I get any, I simply file them away, and after several years I am shocked to find I have over six hundred dollars awaiting redemption.

lol, sounds about right! Though 50p, £1 and £2 coins have value in the UK - £2 is roughly $3 (though last time I was in the States, it was $4) - we amass quite a lot of change, or dump it in charity buckets or whatever. We don't get as much, due to not having sales tax make prices odd.

I've never spent British money, but I imagine that the paper is quite intuitive, as it is with all the countries I've been in.  I cannot offhand think of a system where the paper currency isn't easy to file and sort and come up with the right quantity as needed.

You've spent most of your life using one - the US dollars before they did something to help - at least more recently (post-2003) there's some tinting to help you work out what note is which easier. They are however (I thought they had added some slight variations in size) the same size.

British paper money is quite easy. The green one buys me a beer plus a handful of coins. A brown one buys me two beers plus a bigger handful of coins. Purple ones are the best though because they can often be turned into 5 whole beers!

Green? Fivers are blue.

Even in London, you should get a handful of coins buying 5 beers with £20 (in the north you'd certainly get 6), unless you have gone somewhere that has ripped you off, or you've bought expensive beer.

Rarer seen are the red £50 notes. Note this (and there's increasing size - £50 notes always look massive) large contrast in the bold (not some tinting) colours - blue, brown, purple, red. You cannot easily get muddled between the different notes, unlike even the tinted US bills.

Other than my difficulty with 20p vs. 25p., and the fact that their 5p coins could pass as an American dime, the coins aren't too difficult to get used to. It's not as easy (for an American) as Canada is where the coins are practically interchangeable with ours, but it's not bad. My big problem is the same one I have in every other country without single bills - I never remember to pull out coins for purchases over £1. I'll burn through £100 of bills fairly quickly, ending up with £25 worth of £1 and £2 coins.

We did shrink the 5p (and 10p) when we finally (mid-nineties) decided to fully remove shilling and florin coins from circulation, but the 5p noticeably different to the dime, even by simple touch. They are worth about the same, so it's not a big mess up and they are both worth next-to-nothing.

And the £1 and £2 (same for €1 and €2) coins are (relatively) heavy - I find it hard to believe that you can tolerate having £25 worth before remembering that they are worth something! I'd have wanted to get rid of them after a few had ended up in my wallet.

Single bills for the pound seem silly to me - we ditched the ten-bob note on decimalisation, the £1 note in the 80s, and introduced the £2 coin in the early 00s. I have the opposite problem of wanting to pay $3 amounts in coins before I remember that the biggest coin in my wallet is 25c and dollars are bills and while I may want to get rid of coins, I'm not quite able to do so.

[Michael in Philly]

....And yes, I too would much rather be using higher value coins instead of banknotes for everyday commerce things like they do in Canada, Japan, Australia, Europe, etc.

Mike

My only problem with that is the weight in your pockets increases faster in Canada or Britain than it does here.

[agentsteel53]

It doesn't quite sound right, even with my accent, but say the phrase fast and you'll pick it up. Thruppenny has nothing to do with two.

the spelling made it looked liked "thru" rhymed with "tu".

We don't get as much, due to not having sales tax make prices odd.

indeed, our sales taxes make us get a lot of change on small purchases.  a $1.99 bottle of water turns into $2.17, yielding nearly a dollar change.

I'm assuming it is a law that prices displayed must include VAT?  here we have no such law, and as a seller I definitely advertise the pre-tax prices!

You've spent most of your life using one - the US dollars before they did something to help - at least more recently (post-2003) there's some tinting to help you work out what note is which easier. They are however (I thought they had added some slight variations in size) the same size.

having grown up with that system, I could identify a bill just by general appearance - you could blank out all text, and the portrait, and I could probably sort and count currency just as fast as if all the features were there. 

And the £1 and £2 (same for €1 and €2) coins are (relatively) heavy - I find it hard to believe that you can tolerate having £25 worth before remembering that they are worth something! I'd have wanted to get rid of them after a few had ended up in my wallet.

and that's why my coins end up in the car center console, or on the nightstand, with such frequency! 

(mods: we really need to split this thread )

[mgk920]

....And yes, I too would much rather be using higher value coins instead of banknotes for everyday commerce things like they do in Canada, Japan, Australia, Europe, etc.

Mike

My only problem with that is the weight in your pockets increases faster in Canada or Britain than it does here.

Quite the opposite.  The experience in Canada when they introduced their C$2 coin ('twonie') and dropped the C$2 banknote on the same day in 1996 was that people started spending coins up to the needed amount in 'small time' commerce, such that demand on the RCM for new C$1 ('loonies') and C$0.25 coins dropped to zero - the recirculation effect was that strong.  They did not start making quarters and loonies for circulation again until about 1999 (their 1999-2000 century series of monthly commemorative quarters, what the USA's state quarters program was based on).

Mike

[realjd]

You've spent most of your life using one - the US dollars before they did something to help - at least more recently (post-2003) there's some tinting to help you work out what note is which easier. They are however (I thought they had added some slight variations in size) the same size.

Nope, the sizes are all still the same. While our notes are all the same color, the denomination is clearly printed on all four corners of the bill on both sides. It's easy enough (at least for someone used to it) to find the correct bill by flipping through one corner of the stack in your wallet since you'll see the number regardless of the bill's orientation. The other foreign money I have in my desk (English and Canadian) isn't as consistent or thorough with number placement.

Green? Fivers are blue.

Even in London, you should get a handful of coins buying 5 beers with £20 (in the north you'd certainly get 6), unless you have gone somewhere that has ripped you off, or you've bought expensive beer.

The one I have here looks green to me, although I suppose much of it is actually teal. And looking at them, the £10 bill that I called brown is mostly orange.

The most I paid for a pint was £5 at an upscale pub near my hotel. I only had one there then we went someplace else. Most of the time I was paying around £3.50 - £4, give or take. My usual hotels are in the Marylebone area though so prices are higher in general. I suppose they figure the Aston Martin driving young bankers around there can afford the extra few quid over a night's drinking.

We did shrink the 5p (and 10p) when we finally (mid-nineties) decided to fully remove shilling and florin coins from circulation, but the 5p noticeably different to the dime, even by simple touch. They are worth about the same, so it's not a big mess up and they are both worth next-to-nothing.

They're noticeably different when you have them next to each other, but they're similar size and color otherwise. When I'm counting change with a pocket full of British money, I have to make a conscious effort to remember that it's worth 5p and not 10p.

And the £1 and £2 (same for €1 and €2) coins are (relatively) heavy - I find it hard to believe that you can tolerate having £25 worth before remembering that they are worth something! I'd have wanted to get rid of them after a few had ended up in my wallet.

I suppose I was exaggerating a bit with £25, but my point still stands. And when my pocket gets heavy with coins, in the US I'll get rid of them by using them to pay the cents part of a bill. So if a bill came to $7.62, I'd pay $10.62 and get $3 in bills back. In England (and Canada, etc.) I tend to do the same, so a bill that would come to £3.25 or something I'd pay with a £5 bill and 25p in coins, not even remembering that I had more than enough heavy gold coins to pay the whole amount.

Single bills for the pound seem silly to me - we ditched the ten-bob note on decimalisation, the £1 note in the 80s, and introduced the £2 coin in the early 00s. I have the opposite problem of wanting to pay $3 amounts in coins before I remember that the biggest coin in my wallet is 25c and dollars are bills and while I may want to get rid of coins, I'm not quite able to do so.

I'm always fascinated by the small cultural differences like this, especially in cultures as similar as ours are. Money in particular is one of those things that each country does slightly differently, and it's used frequently enough when traveling that it's a good reminder that you're in a foreign land.

[TXtoNJ]

....And yes, I too would much rather be using higher value coins instead of banknotes for everyday commerce things like they do in Canada, Japan, Australia, Europe, etc.

Mike

My only problem with that is the weight in your pockets increases faster in Canada or Britain than it does here.

I actually like that when I'm in other countries, or when I have a bunch of dollar coins. Instead of a heavy pocket meaning a couple of bucks, it means that you've got real money in there

[Truvelo]

I've been reading this thread with interest and I have to agree with some of the points being made.

Firstly £5 notes are a turquoise color that is somewhere between green and blue. It's hard to describe the exact color.

£20 could get you a lot more than 6 beers at the right place and these are full pints rather than the 12oz you normally get in the US.

Sales tax in North America is one of my big annoyances. I remember on one of my first visits giving the clerk the exact amount in change displayed on the item only to be told I had to pay more. This is where our system of tax inclusive prices is better = what you see is what you pay.

[Michael in Philly]

^^I've always assumed the reason for not including the tax in the price printed on certain items (or advertised, or whatever) is that it'll vary from one state to another (even within states in some cases), so a national chain can advertise such-and-such as costing $19.95, or a book can have a cover price of whatever, that's valid nationally.  I assume VAT within a given European country isn't variable?

[kkt]

Did you know that there are sixteen ozzes in a lib?

I thought that there were 12 d in a s and 20 s in a £ (or something like that), at least at one time.

But I do hate it when I see people measuring the lengths of things in minutes and seconds.

Mike

Oh, minutes and seconds are for measuring angles, not lengths...

[kkt]

Baking is an exact science.

I think you overstate how exact baking is.  I've baked a fair amount and never resorted to weighing the ingredients.  There are other variables than density or exact amount of the dry ingredients that have a greater impact on the success of the project -- humidity, variability between ovens.  These factors are generally harder to measure and are not provided in recipes.

[kkt]

Thanks english si for explaining why there seemed to be (essentially) multiple currencies circulating in Great Britain before the 1970s. I never understood why "classes of currency" was ever needed, but that does clear things up...well, somewhat. 

Oh, but he left off Guineas!  Up to the 19th century, guineas were the gold coin, shillings the silver coin, pennies the copper coin.  Pennies were a fiat money, but the value of guineas relative to shillings fluctuated with the relative values of gold and silver.  In 1815, they decided to make silver a fiat money as well, exchangable for gold, at 21 shillings per guinea.  At the same time, they started making sovereigns the gold coin, worth 20 shillings (1 pound).  Actual guineas went out of circulation fairly soon, but expensive things continued to be priced in multiples of 21 shillings rather than pounds -- suits, jewelry, doctor's fees, etc.  Even today some luxury British goods are priced at multiples of 1.05 pounds.

[mgk920]

Did you know that there are sixteen ozzes in a lib?

I thought that there were 12 d in a s and 20 s in a £ (or something like that), at least at one time.

But I do hate it when I see people measuring the lengths of things in minutes and seconds.

Mike

Oh, minutes and seconds are for measuring angles, not lengths...

Minute = '
Second = "



Mike

[silverback1065]

i think he means using tick marks to denote feet and inches like writing 5 feet 6 inches as 5'6"

[agentsteel53]

ah okay.  here I thought he was proposing metric time.

"the length of the baseball game was 2.0637 hours"

[kphoger]

1912 - one night in a decent room in a downtown hotel - $2
2012 - $100-150

thanks.  this is a good comparison here because the price of that shouldn't much come down... sure, you get more features (color TV in every room!), but objectively speaking you are paying for something very similar.

I have a cast-iron sign which claims 25c for a night's stay rurally, with 10c extra for a bath.  this is from the late 19th century, and it jives well with paying about $30-40 for a clean but featureless room out in the sticks.

1912 - first class letter - 3¢
2012 - 45¢ (Mail is a BARGAIN today!  In real inflation terms, a first class letter stamp should now be about $2.50.)

I had thought about this, but decided it would be too tangential to the discussion (oh hey, metric system what now?) to introduce services priced by government fiat.  it might be more interesting to compare Pony Express to FedEx Overnight, revealing that it's much, much cheaper and quicker today thanks to our transportation infrastructure.

Two hours of pushin' broom buys a eight-by-twelve four-bit room.....

[realjd]

£20 could get you a lot more than 6 beers at the right place and these are full pints rather than the 12oz you normally get in the US.

The right place apparently isn't Central London! Except for a Weatherspoon pub (the one by Marble Arch maybe...), I don't recall paying less than £3.50 anywhere. And yes, real pints are excellent, although your beer is weaker to make up for it. And while standard American bottles are 12 oz, a pint at a bar is usually 16 ounces. It's also not unusual at some bars (usually sports bars) to offer tall draught beers sized at 24 ounces. You will find some English and Irish pubs here pour real pints also.

I wish we could easily get cask ales here.

Sales tax in North America is one of my big annoyances. I remember on one of my first visits giving the clerk the exact amount in change displayed on the item only to be told I had to pay more. This is where our system of tax inclusive prices is better = what you see is what you pay.

Agreed. I wish our sales tax was included on the sticker price and not calculated at the register. I noticed in England that you could tell the Americans at a store because we always wait for the total at the register before we start counting out money.

[mgk920]

i think he means using tick marks to denote feet and inches like writing 5 feet 6 inches as 5'6"

Yea, 'five apostrophes and six quotes'.



Mike

[mgk920]

£20 could get you a lot more than 6 beers at the right place and these are full pints rather than the 12oz you normally get in the US.

The right place apparently isn't Central London! Except for a Weatherspoon pub (the one by Marble Arch maybe...), I don't recall paying less than £3.50 anywhere. And yes, real pints are excellent, although your beer is weaker to make up for it. And while standard American bottles are 12 oz, a pint at a bar is usually 16 ounces. It's also not unusual at some bars (usually sports bars) to offer tall draught beers sized at 24 ounces. You will find some English and Irish pubs here pour real pints also.

I wish we could easily get cask ales here.

There is a brauhaus here in Appleton where the first-generation German immigrant owners price and pour their beer in 500mL, 1L and even 2L ('boot') quantities.



Mike

[vdeane]

....And yes, I too would much rather be using higher value coins instead of banknotes for everyday commerce things like they do in Canada, Japan, Australia, Europe, etc.

Mike

My only problem with that is the weight in your pockets increases faster in Canada or Britain than it does here.

I believe that is what is called a man's problem; women have handbags that take care of this issue quite nicely.

[formulanone]

....And yes, I too would much rather be using higher value coins instead of banknotes for everyday commerce things like they do in Canada, Japan, Australia, Europe, etc.

Mike

My only problem with that is the weight in your pockets increases faster in Canada or Britain than it does here.

I believe that is what is called a man's problem; women have handbags that take care of this issue quite nicely.

I confess that I have a backpack with about $3-5 in change, for the occasional  parking meter or soda machine (I encounter some that don't take bills).

I suppose larger denominations of coinage would prevent that, but only a few machines accept the dollar coins. It's amazing how we can print more money, but terrible at minting new stuff, save collectibles and commemoratives.

A $5 coin would probably work, but we're so much further down the path of electronic transfers with every passing day, that it seems like a bit of a boondoggle at this point.